


Heat

by minkmix



Category: Dark Angel (TV)
Genre: Hurt Alec, M/M, NC-17 ONLY FOR PART 12: A BONUS THAT HAD BEEN EDITED OUT., Original Cindy - Freeform, X series abuse in almost every way, h/c, worried max
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:11:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Ames White finds a new method to flush out male X5s from hiding. And it's dirty.Continued inTraces: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434751/chapters/35826957





	1. Heat

_Ames White tapped the container idly on the bare table of the warehouse and looked back up at the unlikely man that sat opposite him._

_"Where did you get this?"_

_White had feelers running through the city that had so far picked up very few leads. However, when he heard some drifter pushing drugs down by the waterfront had dropped the word "Manticore" to too many people he had found him soon enough. He wasn't, unfortunately an X series, just some street crawler that thought he'd gotten lucky when he was offered a wad of money if he got into the SUV with tinted windows._

_"Some stiff. Found him dead in a Motel 10 out by Sector 4 check point."_

_Ames White opened the container again. The stiff was undoubtedly one of the many Manticore scientists that had vanished like smoke after the shut down. Some had been retrieved, some hadn't and some ended up dead in motel rooms probably scrapping up cash by cooking up drugs in their bathroom sinks._

_He looked back up at the worn tired face and the crumpled and filthy denim jacket. This waste of air had undoubtedly killed the former Manticore researcher and hawked everything he had found. Except this. White smiled to himself at how his work was sometimes neatly done for him._

_"Do you know what this is?"_

_The man glanced down at the metal case with its neat row of vials nestled inside and shrugged. "Andy maybe? Probably some Trance too.” There was a look back over his shoulder at the door. He was getting impatient and uneasy. “All I know its good as gold and a guy like you, you can run a chem test easy."_

_The gun didn't make much of a sound. The silencer made a death into less than a nonevent. The body would be the only issue and it wasn't his._

_Ames White turned and left the table to the small team of suited men that were waiting patiently. He tapped the metal case with a forefinger._

_“Today is our lucky day gentlemen.”_

_“Sir?”_

_“Use our contacts. Feed our new find into the downtown city center water main. I want complete saturation into the system, a vial sample every 12 hours. Embed it the deep detox filters, I want it to spread out even and wide.”_

_“But sir, won't the water system bio net pick it up--“_

_“It will never read, this stuff is harmless,” Ames White adjusted his tie. “It is genetically engineered to only affect a certain… type.”_

_“And sir?”_

_“What is it?” Ames asked impatiently as turned to leave his men to his business._

_“What do we report to base?”_

_White smiled. “Tell them to wait and watch.”_

 

 

Winter in this town wasn’t like the winters he knew growing up. Growing up. Alec tried to smile but he just couldn’t. When you said it like that, it almost sounded charming. Rolling hills, sledding, a fireplace and Christmas morning…

He did laugh out loud to himself then and it sounded strained, desperate and horrible.

Winter here was a subtle shift in seasons that slid into one another like a pack of cards in a parlor trick. It got cold sure, but nothing like Wyoming. In a tribute he had never gotten his place heated even though he wasn’t even sure if he could if he wanted to. His domain was as frosty as the old barracks. And as quiet.

It was strange that the last time he felt like he did now, was back then. Maybe that is why it kept coming back to mind again and again. The clouds of his own breath as he tried to control his racing heart beat. The disorientation. The uncontrollable tremors. The hours in the semi darkness staring at those Manticore cinder block walls. The silent pleading hope that every moment that passed would bring him closer to the end of it all.

Alec sat under the frigid stream of water of the shower until he could stop shaking long enough to twist the rusted water tap off. It was dark by the time he gripped the sides of the cold bathtub and pulled himself up. He shivered as his muscles vibrated and cramped up and down his frame. It had taken almost a week of it before he realized he had to stop going to work. Slowly, every sound was becoming too loud, every color too bright, and every scent too powerful. He thought maybe if he just took it easy for a day it would subside like it always did. He'd felt it before, in shades and instances but nothing like this since the good old days. But even then, it had never gone on this long. It had never gotten this bad. He stumbled to his rarely used bedroom, fumbled for his sweat pants and laid down on the lumpy mattress.

After the first day he didn't show at work, he knew he should have called in and gave some bullshit explanation. But everything got worse. He was having trouble holding a fork just to eat. So he stopped eating. Alec didn't have to go to a doctor to know his temperature was bizarrely high and fluctuating wildly. No doctor could help him anyway. There wasn't a single person in his new outside world that could help him. The top blanket and sheet of his bed was quickly soaked with his sweat as the cold water quickly evaporated on his bare skin.

He dreamt.

Brilliant flashes of red, washes of crimson, forms of bodies, faceless phantoms promising him it would be over, over and over and over… His eyes flared open as he heard the far off front door open.

Twist of the knob, the bad cut of the frame made wood scrap across wood, the old floor boards creaked the same way every time you stepped on them. The whine of the hinge and her voice both at once announced herself. Even though he was a wall away he could smell her scent, swept in with the lingering acrid smell of the outside corridor. It never quite had gone away since some long ago fire that had gutted one of the upper floors of the building.

He listened to her footsteps traverse the small living room and the corner to his kitchen, knowing she'd pause and believe him not to be home. Why check the bedroom? She knew he slept about as much as she did...

She called out his name again, this time in a more subdued tone that one uses when they are disappointed. All this way for nothing and all that jazz. He didn't exactly live anywhere that she would just happen to be passing by. Alec had known that missing this many days from work might do this, draw her out here to look for him. He had thought about heading her off at the pass to keep her away. In the second night of his seclusion he had starting shaking too bad to even type an e-mail. On the third he had fought himself considering the thought of paging her. By the fourth he had ended up just staring at his phone. He couldn't think of what to say. By the time he found words before he forgot them he couldn't make sense of the glowing numbers in the darkness. Oh well. Too late now.

She was coming closer.

He tried to will his voice to work, form some words of warning as she finally started moving to his bedroom door. The door was slightly cracked, a sliver of light he had been staring at for days in the black of his world. The words wouldn't form in his dry mouth, his hands shook as he gripped the blankets waded in his fists.

The door swung open, her eyes adjusting instantaneously to the dim space and locking onto him immediately.

"What's a matter? “ She tried to make it a joke, but her voice was tense. “You got the flu?"

Her scent was strong before but now, with her in the room, it roiled and boiled like a bottle of perfume had been tossed and shattered on the floor. Why couldn't she mind her own fucking business? Oh god, why did she have to come here…

He couldn't catch his breath.

"Alec?" She stepped closer.

She wouldn't be like any of the Ordinaries. Every time Alec had used his body with a human being he had to keep himself in check. Every motion and act of his will was restrained when he realized how fragile their naked bodies were used by his own. He had caused pain by accident and mistake until he learned to reign back what he wanted to do. What he was capable of doing.

"Normal's been having a fit." She ventured when he still hadn't answered her. "He says he’s going to give your job to a blind kid if you don't come in tomorrow."

But he wouldn't have to stop himself with an X5. He could let himself go. He could behave like the machine he was and never cause the damage that it would on normal flesh. He could do what he wanted and maybe some of this pain would go away, maybe it would stop... Alec hadn't even been aware he had gotten up off his bed. Sweat cooling on his bare back, his face hot and his vision sharp. She was staring at him back, the cast of her annoyance clouded by something else.

He moved.

Her long hair curled and locked around his fist, her neck bared. Her skin was hot and soft with sweat from having biked all the way to his sector. The plaster on the wall cracked from the force he backed her into it, the rip of her tank under his hands brought him closer to the flesh beneath, his mouth on her shoulder, even this close to the roaring of her perfume burn it wasn't enough, he couldn't get close enough-

He was on the floor, his arm twisted hard up between his shoulder blades, a heavy combat boot firmly placed on the small of his back.

"What the hell is a matter with you?!" She gasped in confusion.

His mind slid and tumbled through the last 5 seconds. He stared hard at the floor that was centimeters from his face. "I-I don't know…" Alec stopped fighting her and felt the humiliating hot wet flood of tears in his eyes.

She paused and then slowly leaned down close to him, carefully sniffing around his neck and face. There was a small sound of her surprise.

"Oh great." She breathed.

"M-Max?" Alec weakly struggled in her hold, swallowing back the sobs that wanted to start at the back of his throat. "I can't- I think I – I think s-something is wrong with me Max, I can’t--."

"Where's your phone." Max sighed shortly. "I have to make a call."

 

 

Logan didn't get to this side of town very often. After he parked his car in the most likely place that he'd think it might still be there when he got back, he paid an armed street walker double what she charged for her usual services to watch it for him anyway.

As he negotiated his chair up onto the cluttered and filthy sidewalk he smiled to himself. If she didn't jack it herself. As usual it was difficult finding a building when addresses had turned difficult to confirm much anymore. He wondered how the Jam Pony workers managed to find anything half the time. Giving up on the nonexistent building numbers he used the landmark Max had mentioned on the phone instead. A graffiti covered stone fountain.

It was dry of course, the mute craved figures proffered baskets that ran with weeds instead of water. Shaking his head to a few half bored dope pushers he took the left and a right and there it was. Max's bike was chained up just inside the door where a doorman, or the closest one came to in these squatter co-ops, was snoring in front of a fuzzy television Japanese baseball game. There was a moment of worry when he spotted the taped off double doors of the elevator shaft but he quickly spotted the service lift by the stairs. As he let the metal grate slam shut behind him he silently marveled at how much the city citizen's had managed on their own with little to no help from the outside.

The lift laboriously creaked up to the 6th floor. A doorman. A working elevator. This place might even have hot water running. Considering what sector this was this was practically a luxury high rise. He laughed a little to himself.

He held the metal grate open for an exhausted looking mother of three and wheeled down the bumpy threadbare hall carpet to a door, Max assured him, that would have the number 4 on it. She hadn't lied, although the faded outline of a 3 that was beside it made him wonder once more how these bike messengers got their packages to anyone at all.

The door opened just as he raised his fist to knock.

"Do you have it? Did you get it?" Max asked impatiently.

"It's nice to see you too." He told her with a smile. And it was the truth too. He hadn't seen much of Max for over a month and this mysterious errand in the middle of nowhere was just precisely how he figured he'd see her again anyway.

She gestured him in hurriedly, glancing up and down the hallway cautiously before shutting the door behind him. Her mood was as urgent as it had been on the telephone.

"So where is it?"

"It's right here." He said slowly, taking out the package he had zipped up in his bag.

Max nearly grabbed it from him and poured out the contents of amber plastic bottles filled with pills. "Are they 200 MG? Was that the highest dose you could get?" She was studying the labels intently.

"Sure, just one of those will knock out a horse-"

"Perfect." She took a deep breath, and moved to the small drab kitchen to grab her bike water bottle that was sitting on the counter.

"Hey, do you want to tell me what exactly is going on?" Logan inquired, studying her haste in confusion. "Are you okay?"

"What? Yeah, I'm fine." she said, brushing back past him and heading for a closed door that sat towards the back of the apartment.

Logan looked around at the shabby mismatched furniture and strangely large and expensive television that sat by the window. There was a sound system set up around it that he also knew cost more than the one he had in his penthouse.

"Where are we anyway?"

Max's voice was soft and tense as she opened the closed door.

"Alec? I've got it."

Logan looked around again in renewed interest. This was Alec's place? For some reason he never really thought Alec actually had a home. The idea was of course ridiculous, but he hadn't ever considered where it was or what it might be like. He most especially never thought he'd actually be sitting in it. The room Max had vanished into was quiet.

Logan felt his brow furrow.

He rolled across the wooden floor and paused at the threshold, uncertain and concerned. The lights were off, and in the dim of the hall Logan could barely make out what lay in shadow. It wasn't a large room, like most of these converted buildings, none of them were really ever made to be logical living spaces. Storage closets became living rooms, a boiler room turned into your kitchen. There wasn't much room in there for much besides a bed. And there he was, the apparent owner of the apartment, laying on it while Max was tipping the bottle of pills Logan had brought into her hand.

"Max?" Logan ventured.

"Swallow these." Max urged as she held a hand full of the large capsules in her palm, pressing them up against Alec's mouth.

Logan squinted in the dark, suddenly realizing that she was feeding them to him because Alec's hands were lashed with what looked like electrical cord to the radiator piping that ran up the wall behind him.

"Max... what's going on-"

"In a sec Logan. Just-Just give me a sec okay?" She was pushing the pills into Alec's mouth while he was twisting away, the water from the bottle running down his chin as she tried to force him to drink after each one.

Logan, if he had learned much at all about this transgenic, knew when to wait.

 

 

"Wait, you mean, like when you, um..."

"Yes, exactly like that." Max murmured.

Logan felt his eyebrows rise as he nodded. The living room was dark with the hour but neither one of them had made to light the candles to help the dim lamp that sat in the corner.

"Okay, well, then after 24 hours it'll all be over and, he'll be back to normal? Is all of this.." Logan gestured to the pills that sat on the table. "..really necessary?"

"Yes it is." Max looked at him hard, the faint blush to her cheeks showing her discomfort on the subject. "Somebody did this to him. They did it on purpose because they knew what would happen."

Logan sighed. "That may be the case Max but why on earth would they do… that."

"Because the males are- the males are just different." She replied in a strange voice. "In how they are when they- when it... If it comes on too strong, they can lose it Logan."

“How?”

“What do you mean how?” Max rubbed at her eyes. “This isn’t a frat boy at last call. It’s Manticore. It’s just different.”

Different. Everything that came out of those labs was different. He looked down at his folded hands in a slow understanding. Primal aspects of human nature engineered to be beyond the human scope and with animal splicing thrown into the mix. What does an animal in the wild do for a mate?

"So you're saying he's dangerous."

"Someone knew it would make him go out and hurt someone or... or worse."

Max didn't say it but Logan was beginning to see the larger picture. Someone thought they could drive out a male X5 into the sector cops scopes and hopefully the news. The method was odd, but he had to admit, it had a warped kind of genius.

"And it isn't some normal cycle this time," Max continued. "Alec has been out of work for a week. He's been holed up in here because he knew if he left, he'd...he’d…” She stood up and grabbed her backpack. “Those cords aren't going to last forever."

"Wait... Where are you going?"

"I don't have a couple pairs of stainless steel handcuffs on me, do you?"

Logan sighed.

"Watch him."

"Me?" Logan blinked.

"Yes." She told him curtly. “I’ll be right back.”

Logan rolled towards her as she undid the door lock. “What exactly am I supposed to do?”

“Be careful.”

The door slammed behind her.

 

 

Logan sat in his chair and listened to the creak and thud of whomever lived upstairs move around. When Max got back he’d suggest that they try to move Alec to his place. He needed to be at his own interface and he needed to start some research of his own. It didn’t make any sense. Whoever did this must not know where Alec was or why bother with all of this? And if they didn’t know where Alec was, how did they reach him to induce one of these cycles? He resisted the urge to turn the television on to see if anything about this situation had spread to any other male X5s that may be in the city. The thought of the jarring noise of media seemed wrong to him at the moment. Like a hospital room, quiet and tense.

He glanced down the hall to the bedroom door that Max had closed behind her. Although, judging from how many pills Max had given him, Alec probably wouldn't wake even if the television was next to his head on full volume. Maybe. The transgenics chemistry did strange things with medicine.

It was also a little strange, once again he thought, that he was here at all. He felt uninvited and like an intruder. The place was much neater than he, if he ever had, imagined. But that might have just been a X5 trait. Even in Max's equally as dilapidated home, she kept what there was to have in order, painfully so.

He looked at the assorted bottles of Pre Pulse booze that sat in the kitchen and wondered at it. Alec did somehow always manage to do pretty well by himself with what little there was to have these days. Curious, he moved towards a bookcase filled with of all things, books…

Logan paused.

A scent wafted over him so strongly that he thought someone had opened a window or door. It was heavy like the last wisp of smoke from a wax candle but under it lay something burning, but vaguely pleasant, like hot crushed sugar. Wondering at it, he turned to see if Max had left something on-

Alec was standing very still in the dim hallway. Knotted electric cords trailed from his wrists. He was clad only in a pair of black sweat pants. His skin was flushed, his face slightly glazed with sweat. So much for a nice calm comatose state.

"Alec." Logan said clearing his throat, startled and unsure of what state this actually put the X5 in terms of conversation. "How uh, how are you feeling?"

Alec, disturbingly enough, was silent.

Logan had another wave of vague guilt even though he wasn't sure why. "Max asked me to come. She asked for something from the hospital-"

“She’s not here.” Alec interrupted softly.

“No,” Logan agreed. “She went, um, somewhere.”

Alec walked slowly to the drab yellow sofa and sat down heavily into it. He was sluggish and obviously dazed, his hands intermittently clenched and unclenched seemingly against his will. How many of those pills had Max given him anyway? He was probably massively dehydrated.

“Wait, right there.” Logan glanced wearily at the snapped cords that still wrapped his wrists and made for the small refrigerator. He opened it to find it empty. “No water?”

“Ran out of bottles. I’m using the tap.”

“Is that safe?” Logan didn’t mean to sound like he did but the city water was notorious for being almost as toxic as nuclear runoff.

Alec smiled a little bit, his usual self for a moment before it faded. “I don’t get sick.”

“Right.” Logan grinned weakly back. He found a glass and filled it at the sink half expecting the water to flow to turn brown and rusty. It looked okay for all that mattered, he knew well enough that clarity didn't mean much. Placing the glass carefully between his legs he turned to-

Alec was standing right behind him.

“What-“ Logan couldn’t finish his question.

Hands clasped down hard on his where they rested on his wheels. Alec’s face was in his, eyes burning with an intensity that told Logan that Max had been in every way completely and utterly correct. He swallowed nervously, unsure of what to do or how to proceed. Logan was about to attempt to reason with Alec when something stopped him.

It was that scent again, stronger now and surrounding him, hanging in the air like incense. Blinking in confusion, he realized that scent wasn't from something in the building, it was coming from Alec.

It reminded him of Max when she dropped in off the street on one of those rare hot summer days, or the smell of her coming off her black camo clothes after shed been exerting herself. But it was a different brand of it, it was heavier and deeper, it was like a steam that he could almost see evaporating off Alec’s skin. Logan was inhaling the transgenic like some heady smoke off a fire.

Logan felt his eyes flutter closed as it overwhelmed him for a moment. Alec was moving slowly now, despite the surge of violence he had displayed moments before. Curiously animal like, his lips grazed Logan’s throat from his collar bone to behind his ear. Chest heaving, Logan jerked his wheels back but Alec kept him right where he was. The X5 followed the path he had made with his mouth with a long lick.

“Alec…” Logan heard his own voice waver.

Alec suddenly knocked him backwards, his chair tipped, his head painfully cracking on the floor as the glass shattered beside him. Stunned, he automatically tried to back away from his chair so he could right himself. Pulling the chair away, Alec crouched down low over him.

Logan hadn't considered truly panicking until he felt Alec’s hands slip up under his shirt and swiftly with one hand undo the button of his black jeans. The scent of the transgenic was clouding his mind like drink, confusing him with its lull and unexplainable pull.

“Alec.”

It was like trying to push back against a concrete wall.

“Alec-please-stop…”

Alec froze over him and drew back.

Logan panted, searching the wide green eyes of the X5 for any sign of sanity.

Alec blinked and almost whimpered. “I’m-I’m sorry-I-“

Logan began to stammer in cautious relief. “It’s-It’s okay Alec, we'll figure it out, we'll figure out what’s going on.“

Alec stood up and looked around as if he wasn't sure where he was. Logan had a sinking feeling that instead of helping, the pills had done nothing but plunge Alec further away from whatever was left of himself. With a shaking hand and one strong yank he flipped his wheelchair back upright and began to pull himself up into it.

“Maybe-you should, maybe you should just lay down until- until Max gets back…“ Logan situated himself back into his chair and breathlessly looked around.

The front door was sitting open.

Alec was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Logan had compulsively checked his watch over and over again.

He was half hoping Alec would miraculously reappear and half-praying he wouldn’t come back anywhere near the place. When he heard the steady tread of swift footfalls coming down the hall he braced himself as to which transgenic would be the one to walk through the front door.

Max took one look into his eyes and Logan knew she realized that Alec was no longer safely laying in the dark of his bedroom. They had quickly agreed they had to get back to Logan’s place to get anything off the police bands and hopefully some clue as to where Alec might be. They had to find him before anyone else did. They had to find him before the X5 did something that set him off on the sector security net like a red flare fired into a night sky.

Logan felt the comforting feel of entering his own home, the knowledge that his system was there waiting for his use and his contacts within immediate easy reach. He could do something here. He could act instead of sitting in a dark apartment waiting for others to do it for him.

“So,” He began as he settled behind his workstation. “First things first…”

“He’ll be trying to stay low, avoid the cops, avoid people. Avoid everyone.” Max said.

Logan considered her words and glanced back at her over his shoulder. "By the way, I never knew you X5s didn't... discriminate."

Max dropped her backpack on the floor and shrugged. "Why would we?" Despite the cold room her cheeks were blushed, and she seemed nervous and on edge.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing, why what's wrong with you?" She shot back.

Logan dragged a hand across his face. "Honestly? I'm not sure." He still felt flushed and slightly dazed. He thought it might have been simple adrenaline but now, still feeling the effects so much later, he doubted it.

Max suddenly looked embarrassed and she averted her eyes. "It'll wear off, don't worry."

"What will?"

"Whatever they gave him packed a punch, even in a normal cycle it can effect any other trans who gets near them, um, it can make you--"

"Oh." Logan interrupted shortly, saving her from having to explain any further. Another perk of his blood transfusion with Max. Now he could suffer some mild effects of what it was to be an X5. "That's um, convenient. I guess."

"You know Manticore, efficiency all the way." She grumbled and slumped back into a leather chair.

Logan's computer monitors were sliding through reams of police reports and traffic station data bases for any word of any activity that would indicate Alec, or anyone that sounded like him out in the city.

He paused when a window popped up. It wasn’t a sector tag but it was a little strange. It seemed like more than half of the city satellite surveillance system had been reallocated into some other utility function. Bringing up his hack program to look past its encoded file description, he quickly saw what it was if not who exactly was using it. Seemed like it was rigged to monitor fairly specific body heat signatures in key hubs of the city center. He tapped at his keyboard to read further.

It was so specialized that Logan wasn’t even sure what use it would be in an overpopulated city with about as many vehicles to set it off as it had people. And it seemed to have only been in use for almost precisely two weeks.

“Did you say Alec started acting strangely about a couple weeks ago? About a week before he stopped going to work?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?” She asked while plucking a marble polished sphere from off his coffee table.

“Interesting.”

"You got something?" Max prompted impatiently.

"Not sure." Logan murmured thoughtfully, turning in his chair to watch her roll the round sculpture in her hands. "Hey Max? If you were Alec, where would you go?"

She was shaking her head. "I've already thought about that. He could have gone anywhere."

"Well, he has no sector pass and he's not exactly thinking straight." Logan thought out loud and turned back to his computer. "You said he’d avoid people. What if he went somewhere where there was no one else... somewhere he knew he'd be alone..."

"Alone?" Max snorted. "In Seattle? Name one part of the city that you could be--"

Logan turned when she abruptly stopped. "Max?”

She stood. "I know where he is."

“Wait.”

Max paused on her way towards the door.

Logan quickly moved towards the mechanical exoskeleton that sat in the corner.

“I’m coming with you.”

 

 

 

Night was as good as any camouflage for certain types.

It was easy to slip through the sagging fence and through the rusted brambles of barbed wire. Simple to find the long since busted emergency exit door held into place by one last badly bent hinge. A vast empty gutted lobby that had once held crowds of people now only kept silence. Stacked tattered piles of abandoned moldy mattresses from the squatters and garbage bags that bled trash out onto the floor.

He ignored it all. He had to go up.

Moving like a ghost up the unlit stair well, he felt the broken glass of smashed beer bottles crunch under his bare feet as he climbed each step. Most people were afraid to come here late at night. Like most of the city, all its bright open places had long since turned into the darkest. The countless homeless that would use a knife for whatever you happened to have in your wallet. The strung out dopers that would do a lot more for a lot less. The gangs that brutally roamed their allotted territories. The sector patrols that did the same thing but just with a badge and permission. But even after those common street dangers, they weren’t the ones that should really keep most of the city citizens behind locked doors in the early morning hours.

It was the type that weren’t afraid to come out to a place like this in the middle of the night that were the ones you really had to be worried about. That type was capable of just about anything. Even a few things you hadn’t even thought of.

People like him.

With his forced speed, it hadn’t taken long at all to find there were no more steps to climb. He moved through the dark, sensing the shift in the stale hanging air. It grew cooler. More humid. Filled with the city grit from the outside. The clear cold up here somehow cleared his head a little bit. The sedatives that Max had given him dulled his edge and kept the buzz of his thoughts momentarily untangled, but he felt like it had unanchored him somewhere. He was adrift in his own body. An impersonal observer of his own muted frantic compulsions.

Alec shivered in the steady night wind that flowed through the looming shattered windows. But the trembling had nothing to do with the low temperature and his lack of anything but thin sweatpants. Some of the windows had been halfheartedly patched up with lengths of plastic tarp but the majority of it was open to the elements.

It had been a place of importance once. Gatherings of people in a monument to the fair city, a piece of art amongst architecture. From a time before the Pulse when you could take all the time and money in the world for things that had no purpose outside of its aesthetic. He had been taught all about art and music but nothing had been given to him for the intention of pleasure or amusement. They had been installed in him like tools for use on the outside. Alec wondered sometimes if his handlers at Manticore ever suspected he would feel anything more than the bland rote facts of those things.

He crouched in one of the empty metal frames that once held a thick pane of glass to look out at the glittering expanse of the city that lay all around him. It was almost pretty from here. Distance could make a lot of things look a lot better. Like watching the flicker of the far off power transformers or the red green dull sparkle of the landfill barges out in the harbor. The braver artists came up here sometimes, their swirls and edges of paint covering the surface of the outside of the saucer like top of the tower. It was easy to get caught if you weren't careful and no young tagger wanted jail time for the trouble. Because of the substantial risk, it was something of note when one of them managed one of their manic murals up here.

You could see new ones appear on the observation disc's belly from down on the street. Alec often wondered who they were and how in some way they had kept the tower what it had been meant to be. Useless aesthetic. The humanity that rioted against the lost notion of an object being beautiful for its own sake. It was nice to know that someone still wanted to know that not everything had to be for something.

He had wanted that. He had wanted to not be constructed for a purpose. Or at least just be allowed to forget he had been.

Alec stood at the edge and looked down into the noisy streets below. The wind blew straight up, bringing the smells of the unchecked auto exhaust, the slow and barely functioning sanitation system, the under laying scent of the street vendors frying meat and dough in oil... all the way down there.

It would be easy to take one more step. Not even his body could take the 600-foot drop into the street. He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. Every time he thought he'd reached some normality to be like anyone else, to push back what he'd been and what he'd seen, it always came back. There would always be some reminder that his creation had been more purposeful than most. Maybe this was it. This was the time he should just acknowledge that his life would never be any better or separate from the men that had created it. They could do this to him. In fact, they had the capacity to do a lot more and a lot worse. But they couldn't stop him from ending himself if he wanted.

They couldn't control that.

He thought of the look on Max’s face as she had studied him in the dim light of his room. Alec shut his eyes and clenched his jaw at the thought of the pain he had heard in Logan’s voice and the fear in his eyes. The pills had settled fully into his system. His limbs felt like dead weight. His eyesight was beginning to blur, his vision going nauseatingly in and out of focus. A sudden wave of dizziness made him stumble backwards just a little.

"Careful 494. You wouldn't want to fall."

Alec swung around at the sound of the voice.

Agent Ames White was standing in the shattered window and regarding him like he’d just ran upon him during a pleasant cocktail party. Dressed always in a carefully pressed suit, he stepped out onto the tower and looked around appreciatively at the sprawling view.

"You know after bagging three X5s in the first day we thought that maybe that was all there was in the city."

Alec made and unmade his fists, struggling to push back the noise in his head and concentrate on his surroundings. White wouldn’t have come here alone.

"You've been hiding from me for quite a while, I'm impressed you held out this long." The other man admitted.

“You know me…” Alec felt a wave of dulled anger when he heard his voice waver noticeably. “I love a challenge.”

White walked closer, his eyes appraising the transgenic with interest. "Your fellow 5s were exposed for only 24 hours. Your saturation must be literally off the charts."

"That’s one way of putting it." Alec mumbled, his gaze going back over to the edge of the precipice.

Ames White didn’t miss the intention behind the gesture.

"You didn't come here to do that did you?" The agent was skeptical and slightly disgusted. "It’s a little dramatic... don't you think?"

"W-What are you doing here?"

"You boys have an extra special infrared mark when you're in the mood." White explained with a smile. “It’s extremely difficult to trace, you really have no idea.”

Alec felt his muscles shudder and twitch under the sedatives.

"We even had to use the skynet. In fact, it takes so much of the sub system that we were ordered to take it down this very evening.” White breathed a small laugh of wonder and shook his head. “A few more hours and we would have never have found you.”

“G-Guess it’s my-my lucky day then.” Alec stammered, fighting the urge to sink down to his knees and press his hands to the metal surface to steady himself.

“So to speak.” White shrugged. “If I had never found you, you would have just eventually died in whatever dark hole you had buried yourself away in."

His head was reeling, his stomach churning; he couldn’t keep his eyes focused on anything.

"It's quite amazing isn't it 494, just how much of our lives are left to chance?"

If Alec could have worked his mouth enough to speak he would have disagreed.

He swayed and faltered. His knees coming down numb against the tower surface and his hands coming out to stop the rest of his fall. His heart was thudding too fast and too hard, he couldn’t breathe. The wind gusted up over the lip of the deck, strong and near frigid on his perspiring skin.

“It’s time to go 494.” White informed him. His men finally appeared out of the shadows of the tower windows and took an easy formation behind the agent.

Alec felt himself shaking his head. He couldn’t go back. He listened to the agent slowly approach and leisurely kneel down beside him. With a hard grip in his hair, White lifted his head to look him in the eye.

Alec looked back at him, the strong scent of White mingling with that of his men. He felt the unyielding pull of their mere presence and blinked back the hot wetness in his eyes of helpless outrage. The chemistry coursing through him was relentless and sickeningly undiscerning. He was so tired. So used up. He could barely summon enough to even glare back at the agent that held him.

“Time to come home.”

There was only one thing left for him to do. With a low desperate growl, he took hold of whatever was left in his engineered body that was still his and tried to wrench himself free. A little surprised but mostly indulgent, White allowed him.

Alec staggered to a shaking stand, casting one look at White and his men before he moved towards the edge. He wouldn’t be going with them anywhere. It would end. All of it. Right here and right now. Just a few steps and he’d be hearing nothing but the roar of wind rushing past until he and all the world would suddenly and blissfully just stop—

“Not quite yet.” White whispered in his ear.

Alec felt his hands go weakly to the arm hooked strong around his neck, the other arm firmly across his chest. Keeping him in check, keeping him from taking the final and last step he needed to never be under anyone’s hands ever again. His eyes burned with tears as he felt his body react to the one pressed up against him even now. He cried out in disgust and the last desperate shreds of anger he owned when White spun him around to firmly hold him by the chin.

“Shhhhh.” White breathed and thumbed away a falling tear across the X5’s cheek.

Alec felt himself start to shake again with the maddening smell and proximity of another human being. The direct skin on skin contact drove his senses past what he thought had been his breaking point and right into beyond all rationality. His hands spasmodically gripped at White’s sleeves, somehow trying to shove him away and draw him closer at the same time. Watching him with amusement, Ames White’s expression began to shift slightly. His easy smile flickered and died. The agent’s chest heaved once in a strong inhale and he blinked slowly. The rest of his stern gaze faded in an instant and was replaced with something else.

His hand gripped hard around Alec’s damp bicep, his other on the slick sweat that beaded along Alec’s jaw. Alec felt the hands on his body begin to shake ever so slightly. He could feel White’s breath on his neck as he leaned closer in some kind of curious and tentative examination. He could feel the bruising hold on his arm slide to the back of his neck to hold him up when he started to weakly sag, no longer able to support himself. Alec bit back a moan when the agent’s cheek lightly grazed his own as White inhaled deeply again. The thumb that had brushed away his tears slid across his lower lip, forcing his mouth open slightly to brush against his tongue.

The subdued touch turned suddenly into violent agitation.

“What—“

Like he had suddenly realized he was in direct contact with something toxic or foul, White quickly pulled his hands away and let the transgenic drop down limply to the ground. White cleared his throat and began to shake his head back and forth as if he was trying to clear it.

"I can smell you." Alec murmured up to him. The words weren't slurred or faint, his focus was full and on the agent above him.

The low tone of his voice was filled with all the danger he had known lurked under his surface. The danger he had tried so hard to keep away from the world.

White swallowed and angrily dragged a hand across his own damp brow.

Alec watched the dazed reaction with fascination. "You smell like an X."

White stared down at him hard, his heart visibly racing in his chest. Alec liked that the other man suddenly had nothing much to say. He felt a small pained grin come to his face as he struggled to sit up.

"You did this to me." Alec wasn't asking a question.

These men and the secrets they owned and played with. Why were they always so shocked when their toys turned out to be something that could spin completely out of their control? They thought they knew it all. They thought they knew enough to do this to him and expect nothing could go wrong.

"Y-you thought you had us all figured out did ya?"

“Be quiet.”

"So what about you Ames?" Alec asked, his grin fading. "Learn anything new?"

"Shut up." The agent’s voice didn't sound much like his own.

Alec returned his stare. "Do you want me to teach you?"

"I said SHUT UP!"

Alec’s chin dropped to his chest as he softly laughed. The agent spoke loudly and firmly over his shoulder.

“Prep him before he goes under for good!” White ordered, his trembling tight fists betraying the calm in his voice. “Then load him up.”

His men exchanged looks from behind him, slightly reassured when it seemed his momentary confusion had passed and was replaced once again with his careful confidence. Alec let his head roll back and felt his eyes slip closed as they approached. He had noticed one thing about the return of Ames White’s familiar neutral expression.

The grin he had worn all during their little reunion was now missing.

 

 

 

Logan followed Max even though she had attempted to leave him standing out in the street by the car.

She moved too fast for him to stay close behind but he quickly found the well used makeshift entrance to the tower and the only logical way up the stairs. He carefully made his way up the winding steps with his flashlight trained upwards and his ears wide open for any signal from Max above. Besides his own footsteps, there was only a silence tinged by muted traffic noise. Logan paused on the stairs, the buzz of the servos in his exco going quiet when he halted.

He took in a deep breath and then another. The faint wisp of scent he had experienced in Alec’s apartment drifted vaguely to him in the air. Burnt crush of sugar and the heavy pleasant weight of something else under it all. The faint lingering scent of it could be easily detected over the dust and years of grime that permeated the place.

Max was right. Alec had come this way. And probably not that long ago.

Encouraged, Logan quickened his pace. Even with the aid of the military brace he wore he was still slightly breathless when he reached the top. He took a moment before venturing into what was the old observation deck of the structure. Keeping his flashlight off he rounded the corner cautiously and was surprised to spot Max immediately.

She was standing very still at one of the many tall windows that had long since turned into open gaping holes. A cursory glance around and her lack of apparent worry seemed to indicate they were all alone.

“Max?” He asked quietly. Even with the wind and the honking horns down below he knew she’d hear him.

“He’s not here.” She said.

Logan walked towards her.

“How do you know?” He knew he didn’t have to tell her about the traces of Alec’s passage up through the stairwell.

She turned and tossed something to Logan. He caught it awkwardly as she brushed past him back towards the stairs. That telltale scent wafted up out of the wadded fabric in his hands. Confused, he examined what Max had found. It was the pair of black sweat pants Alec had been wearing. The sides had been cut in perfect straight lines down and across the seams. He blinked down at it.

Logan thoughts flickered briefly to his own moments long ago waking up to the sound of men with urgent voices. Equipment and tools used to remove his clothing to better examine his injuries and wounds. When you were in a hurry it was easier to use a blade than the time to be careful. The medical staff had given him his clothing back much later and Logan had never quite understood why.

They had cut it all to shreds off his body and made it useless.

He looked back towards Max grimly.

“Well,” He sighed. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to find him.”

Logan nodded and held up the black cloth that had been almost surgically dissected apart.

“Then first we find out who did this.”


	3. part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Italics prob missing. But it's this or nothing. XD_ Maybe I'll go over again one day. Thanks DA fans! I have a huge X-Over of SPN/DA. It should be up soon. I know, I know, X-Overz, but it's fun.

 

It had started raining again.

The steady gentle sheets of drizzle that the city never went long without ran in curtains over the windshield. It cast the grime off the sidewalks and lent a sheen and reflection for all the sputtering neon and glow of headlights. Max sat quietly in the passenger seat with her gaze fixed out on the noisy crush of early morning traffic. They hadn’t spoken since they left the empty tower.

It was frustrating to return to where they had started without knowing anything more than what they suspected was now fact. Someone had wanted to drive Alec out in the open so they could find him. And find him someone did. Logan knew Max was silently seething that they had gotten there just three steps behind whoever was behind this. He knew she was replaying it all over and over in her head about just exactly they could have done differently. He knew better than to try to assure her that they had gotten there as fast that they could have. And he knew he did not have to tell her that this was far from over yet.

By the time they had returned to the penthouse, it took only moments to start the engine of Logan’s network, contacts and everything else in-between that could shed any light on what exactly was going on. Concentrating on any military activity, Logan immediately put feelers out for anything even vaguely out of the city’s ordinary series of operation.

But something about this entire circumstance seemed to be pivotal into exactly how they might ever find the missing X5 again.

"About how they got to Alec..." Logan began, his eyes trained on the stream of data flashing down three monitors. "You said that his... cycle, that it wasn't normal. That someone had done it to him?"

"Yeah." Max said from beside the broad expanse of window that looked over downtown.

These days the list of people and organizations who wanted their hands on a nice healthy and breathing transgenic was pretty long. For DNA samples. For live research. For cloning. To glean out their secrets to enhance a foreign military. But there was always one big name on the top of that list whose former owners still wanted all its rogue children to come on home. And, like every other group that was out for some priceless intel, all its players were as spread out and varied as a tossed pack of cards. Sometimes a pack of cards that had no idea of how many even existed within their own deck.

"Well then, “ He continued thoughtfully. “I've been thinking about how they obviously had no idea where he was, so how did they induce a cycle in the first place?”

“I don’t know.” Max sighed in frustration. “He would have had to come into direct contact with some kind of catalysis.”

"In food maybe?” Logan murmured almost to himself. “But how would they know what food to put it in? There’s no way they could get something like that into the entire city’s food supplies..."

“Maybe it wasn’t so… I don’t know, specific?” Max reasoned.

“How so?”

“It was something they could spread out, like casting a net..." Max was pacing, her thoughts meshing along his line of thought. "It would have to be something simple, something that would get to everybody--"

"The water." Logan interrupted.

He turned back towards Max and met her gaze.

She glanced away and over towards the kitchen sink. Even though Logan's polished chrome was fully filtered and from the building’s own treated reserves, he knew what she was thinking. If someone had contaminated the city's water mains it would go to every faucet, shower and water glass of the countless people that relied on it. With a reach like that you could count on infecting at least one or more of what you had targeted. But then what?

Logan tapped his computer keys until that security grid from its low orbit satellite came up again. For some reason it didn’t shock him that the hack he had performed earlier about the citywide satellite surveillance system had been updated.

The skynet was right back how it should be.

However, the special heat signatures it had been searching for was now not only offline, but like it had never been running in the first place. Slightly confused, he cycled through the encrypted logs and found not even a trace that it had ever even been there. In a network of its size, the swift and utter eradication of its existence was downright spooky. There were only a few extremely powerful organizations that could operate that quickly and on that scale.

The heat signature search had been activated just about around the time Max said Alec had started behaving oddly. It was too coincidental that now the entire system was ghosted virtually within the same hour that the transgenic vanished from the space needle. Logan’s mind brought up the image of Alec on his sofa just the night before. He remembered what the transgenic had said when he had wondered about the wisdom of drinking the tap water.

I don’t get sick.

But Alec had gotten sick. So to speak. And when a transgenic got sick they didn’t quite burn just like anyone else did they? And with the entire skynet scanning the streets for specific body temperatures, anyone looking hard enough could find just what they were looking for…

Like a male X5 driven out of hiding.

"The water? Can we prove it?" Max asked. "Tonight?"

Logan recognized the need for them to act fast but the sound of urgency in her voice made him realize just how dire the timing was actually becoming. When her kind disappeared the chances were usually extremely poor that you would ever see them again. They had to find out where and when the water had been tampered with. If they knew that, then they’d at least have somewhere to start.

"Get a few samples. From a couple locations in town and Alec's place." Logan was already typing a message to a contact with a lab that never closed and never asked you any questions. It also never stayed still for security purposes. "I'll give you an address in about half an hour."

Max caught the phone he tossed to her. "Who do you think got that deep to screw with a entire city water supply without anyone noticing?"

An entire city water supply and all of the city’s skies.

Logan sighed.

Neither one of them had said Manticore out loud yet but they didn't really have to. It might have been burned to the ground but the men that had put it on the map still lived and breathed. The knowledge of the government agency’s involvement was redundant. Logan knew that Max’s real question was just who in the ranks was exactly responsible this time? The list just got a lot smaller but there were still plenty of names on it.

“You get me that sample.” Logan told her. "I think I know a few people in the city works department that could tell us exactly who has that kind of access."

He hoped anyway. Favors sometimes faded in the eyes of people who were never very glad that they owed you any. All he knew was that he sure as hell needed a few of them now. At this point, some bribes and a few lucky phone calls were the only things that could keep Alec from vanishing right back for good into the secret hidden places he came from.

Now it was all just a matter of running out of time.

 

 

 

It was hard to breathe.

The thin medical gown was soaked through and clinging to him with his sweat. Vaguely he knew they were moving, the cold metal under his bare back was vibrating and jostling his body and those that surrounded it as tires made their way over an uneven road. Bright piercing penlights were shone into his eyes. An inflated band around his bicep made his pulse throb in his arm as they measured his blood pressure. His heart rate was taken and the flash and whir of a digital camera sounded around him.

He raised his hands, wrists squeezed too tightly in bands of reinforced steel, trying to push away the scents and the bodies that lay under them, solid and warm. They didn’t pay his weak gestures any attention, they didn’t know what their presence was doing, spiking his heart to thud painfully in his chest, his mind folding in and onto itself. Someone opened his mouth and he felt a tablet pressed against his tongue. Like he was some uncooperative pet, they forced his mouth shut, hand firmly under his chin and another pinched his nose shut forcing him to convulsively swallow it down.

He felt the engine beneath him sputter and die, the world grinding to a halt. Alec lay still, attempting to be ready when a flood of light exploded over him as the doors were flung open. Roughly, he was prodded to his feet and made to walk down a steel ramp into the chill of a warehouse. Wire cages and stainless steel bars lined the shadowed walls, bare light bulbs hung by wires glinted off puddles formed beneath faulty water pipes. Uniformed men stood at each holding cell armed with weapons he'd not seen since the glory days. A neat and orderly hell. His arrival had prompted a bustle of activity, men shouting codes, the typical language of procedure.

That's how you treated a transgenic. By procedure.

Agent White was signing some forms on a clipboard and motioning to his men to keep a tight formation around the X5. Alec noticed with some vague distant satisfaction that the agent was keeping his distance this time.

“You should be feeling better by now.” White informed him. “We can’t have you dying before we even have you ready for transport.”

Alec tried to stay on his feet by his own power but couldn’t. The shakes were back in full but his head did seem to be clearing a little bit. He could focus his eyes and start to gather his thoughts into something more coherent than small desperate fragments. In fact, when he worked his mouth he felt like he could actually form words that weren’t garbled nonsense.

"Q-Quite an operation you've got here." He managed. "All f-for me? You shouldn't have."

"We've invested quite a lot of time and money on keeping you isolated."

Despite his weakness, Alec could not help a small smile. The powers that be were terrified. Although Ames would soon as see him made into dog food, he knew enough to respect his capabilities. His smirk died as he inhaled his first real lungful of the air, the scents until now being too many and powerful to do anything but confuse him. But as the medication they gave him worked further through his blood stream, he could pick out something else. Alec blinked when he realized he was not the only transgenic being kept here.

"No, not just me." He murmured.

White snapped the clipboard shut and studied him.

"Pain makes creatures act against their nature. Now I inflicted this pain on you initially as a tracking device. However, I think some people will be very interested in how well you can restrain yourself."

Alec heard his own voice go low and angry even though he felt himself start to slid towards some kind of laughter.

"What exactly makes you think I’ve done that, Ames?"

White stared back at him hard, his mouth moving into a stern grim line, his hands working at his sides. That look he had up on the needle was slipping back in his eyes. The curious part to his lips and the sudden red flush to the pale skin of his cheeks.

Alec let the laugh go. He couldn’t help it. It was a breathless horrible strained sound that made the armed guards around him shift nervously. White motioned them to stand their ground.

“Pack him up.” The agent ordered tersely. “I don’t want to be off schedule.”

Alec felt his jaw begin to clench.

All around him were sights, smells and sounds almost forgotten. Of unimagined pain and a thousand small deaths. The red flare of a clearance bulb flashed accompanied by the insistent bleat of the door alarm as a truck backed out of the loading bay. The creak and groan of steel doors, barked orders, the rattle of chains and the sharp click of the safety lock.

Memory like a fine needle flashed through Alec's brain and all he could think was no and no and no and NO--

The kick aimed from behind landed in the soft part of the guard's lower belly, angry shouts and gunfire erupting around him. Hands bound, he barreled into another man, knuckles slamming an exposed windpipe. Blood flooded his own mouth as the heavy end of a nightstick connected with his jaw, his pain unreadable as he instinctively reacted with the machine of his body. He felt none of the damage right away, his grade of adrenaline regulating his warped senses.  
With a yell that scattered red in the air he lunged for Ames White.

All the agent did was watch.

The distance between them was almost closed. Alec knew his end would come during or shortly after the man in front of him but that didn’t matter. He’d finish this life even if it meant it was the very last thing he did—

Pain exploded up through his spine like he’d been set on fire.

The taser crackled loud and sharp between his shoulder blades, sending him sprawled onto his stomach. He cursed, panting and shuddering on the damp cement floor. Alec was rolled over.

“You’re just full of surprises aren’t you?” The agent was looking down at him with a slight frown.

Alec summoned the audacity to grin.

“You’ll like your new home I think.” White added. “There are lots of surprises there.”

As he felt his arms being lifted and his body being dragged away, Alec thought that he’d do just fine without any new wonders their technology had to offer.

In fact, he could do without one more astonishing new discovery for a real long time.

 

 

 

 

 

Logan was surprised that they had gotten the results as quickly as they had.

A water department engineer who had just two weeks ago taken up an impressive new bank account was also pretty surprised that Logan had found out all about it. After getting several calls from Detective Sung about money laundering and the prison time it involved, the frightened guy was ready to tell Logan almost anything he wanted. He got a name that made him grit his teeth.

Ames White.

The other thing that was of any use was an address. It was the location that the engineer had used to pick up the contaminate that he had been instructed to infuse the city water with. It was all they had so they took it. Max had taken off without him on her bike as soon as she’d scanned the harbor address that had popped up on the computer screen. Cursing the lines at the sector points, he got there almost half an hour behind her with his ailing car and the congested traffic.

The place was big. Left over from the its industrial shipyard days, its massive size sat half crumbling at the bay’s edge. But as soon as he got closer he got a sinking feeling at the sight of the large waterfront structure. It seemed too quiet. Too dark. Abandoned and silent. Assuring himself that no one was watching his progress, he cautiously slipped under the rusted retractable metal truck-loading door and entered its dim interior.

With a twinge in his stomach, he immediately saw Max standing in the great vast space within it. Eerily reminiscent of the space needle, she was alone and silent. Logan looked around at the empty warehouse. The desks had just recently been stripped of the equipment that had sat on it. The tell tale left over cables and fine square outlines of dust that had been collecting around magnetic static of computer monitors left no doubt that this had been some operational center. He noted the fresh oil stains on the cement floors from large utility vehicles that were no longer parked there.

Max sat down heavily on a tipped over wooden crate.

They had come so close. Twice. He flexed his fists. They had missed them in the matter of an hour. Maybe even less.

He wanted to think that there were always options. There was always somewhere else to look, to go, and to listen. But he knew down in his gut that this might be the case this time. They had moved as fast as they could but it wasn’t enough. The operation was too well organized, too fluid and efficient. White had an entire military organization in motion with unfathomable resources to draw from.

Logan had his desktop, a few informants and one transgenic. And no matter how capable they were, that still just made them two people against something much larger than they could even maybe imagine.

When Max finally spoke, her voice wasn’t quietly furious like it had been.

“We’re too late.”

Instead, it was small and a little bit lost.

“He’s gone.”

 

 

 

 

Alec heard the rumble of a truck engine.

Movement.

Loud and roaring.

Fumes of gasoline and the sweat of human beings intermingled and overpowering in the small enclosed space. Awareness returned gradually, his surroundings shifting from white to gray until shapes became permanent and solid. Ironically, the pain helped, even when the jolt of the vehicle sent shudders through his muscles so violent and involuntary that he clenched his teeth and did what he thought people might do when they prayed.

He could feel it. The memory of it was as familiar as his own skin. As identifiable as the work of his muscles and the body he willed. The trousers and the stiff shirt that were washed in that shitty government issue detergent. Boots he hadn't felt for a long time were laced too tightly up his calves. He didn't have to be able to see himself to know they were all in bleak shades of his former handler’s camouflage.

They had put the product back in its proper packaging. They had removed what he had claimed as his own and had begun to put him back into his place. You don't ask anything you own for its permission. The thought of them putting this uniform back onto his body without his knowledge enraged him almost as badly as the violation of his chemistry. And it seemed that his chemistry was being tampered with yet again. The full boil of his body had been pulled back into the daze of a dull simmer. Wondering at the change that wasn’t quite relief but not the agony it had been, he tried to concentrate on just exactly what was his current physical state.

Whatever he was lying in was coffin like and slanted to let in some faint ambient light. It wasn’t much but it was enough for his crafted eyes to make out what there was to see. His flesh burned with needles wrapped tightly into both his forearms, the tubing leading to a portable collection of drip bags that were wadded and hung so low above his face that they brushed maddeningly against his skin. They swayed with the motion of the vehicle, the contents sloshing sickeningly. Remembering the pill they had gave him, he thought this looked like something more substantial to sustain him for a long haul with minimal to no supervision.

Sensations were brutal, dwelling on them too long made him want to give up and sink back into the black unconsciousness that threatened to swallow him whole. Fighting back the haze of his swimming vision, he felt the restraints bite into his neck, wrists, waist, legs and ankles when he tested his numb limbs. The container he lay in was tightly wedged almost crate like alongside some other equipment that had been packed into the back of some moderately sized truck.

He was cargo.

There was a steady icy fog of his own breath through the filter on the oxygen mask that was strapped tightly across his nose and mouth. Alec realized why he appeared to be trembling uncontrollably as he considered the ice that coated the sides of his narrow enclosure. The unheated transport was traversing through extremely low temperatures. It was cold wherever he was. Much colder than the city he’d left.

How long had he been out anyway?

Alec could hear voices muffled in the background above the thrum of the engine. He was being discussed somewhere above him in the driver cab. All he could make out was the designation he hadn’t heard this often in quite a long time.

X5-494.

One day on the outside, one of his first as Manticore was still smoking out there in the woods, he had come to realize something about the nature of his kind. There were some transgenics who could not live among humans. Some who would not. This went against the grand design of their makers. From the beginning, their genetics were meant to be uniform, no prototype with an advantage over another. But they had been wrong. Once introduced to a new environment they discovered that there were few with the ability to adapt and others who inevitably failed to sustain themselves. Some relished the freedom of choosing their own deaths, using the world outside as their dagger rather than let Manticore mutate their remains -- the precious strands of their DNA -- to create the next big thing.

On one of those first days of unexpected freedom, he'd looked in a mirror. And, finding no face looking back at him, Alec realized he needed one. But he could be what his makers wanted once again if necessary. Alec could adapt again, just like he had when suddenly he’d had to walk the streets and live his days without any orders but his own. He could pretend and conjure and go back to being one of the faceless. All he had to do was play their game until he could put one final bullet through his own brain.

Then that last laugh would be his.

But as his tenuous grasp on his consciousness began to slip once more, he knew that wasn’t really true. Alec wouldn’t get the last of anything. A man like Ames would only find his self-annihilation interesting.

Alec heard himself make a small harsh noise under his mask. He wasn’t sure if was a laugh or a sob. With a ragged sigh, he finally gave up trying to keep himself awake and started to spiral back down into blissful silence of nothing. As his eyes slipped closed, Alec wondered when exactly he'd open them again. He forced himself not to struggle as he felt himself dissolve bit by bit, sinking down further and further away. And right before the last strand of thought snapped and he fell, he knew that there was at least one thing was for sure.

When he did come back he'd be home.

to be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

"Get out."

"Sir?"

"Get out of here."

"But sir-"

"I said leave." He growled.

Ames White listened to his men file hesitantly from the room behind him. When the door finally shut he started to breathe again. Shaking out his clenched fist and scowling at the shaking that wouldn't seem to let up.

494 was still staring at him from the chair in the center of the room, arms and legs restrained in steel bands to keep his considerable power subdued. The specimen had run out that night in nothing but his bed gear. Half naked, no shoes, just like that. Like some barely civilized animal. That's all these X-5s were when they weren't being given orders. Expensive wrecking balls that had to be told when to sleep, eat and fuck.

White's gaze fell down on the definition of the transgenic's chest. The line of his throat, the strain of muscles in his arms. There was a soft slight of a smile on 494's face, his body shuddering in a slow steady pant. For the first time since White had entered the room, 494 spoke.

“Alone... at last.” The X-5 somehow managed to wink at him.

White felt a flash of cold through the warmth. That was impossible, he wasn't like this thing. He was real. He was better than real, he was perfect. He took three steps to reach him, the back of his hand sent 494's head flying backwards, the drops of sweat that glistened on his skin flew. The scent the X-5 left on his hand was so strong that he stumbled backwards, his own head swimming. He glanced down at his hand, suppressing the urge to wipe it clean on his jacket. This freak from a lab, this cheap copy of science was having some kind of effect on him. He stumbled out into the hallway, the hand that had made contact with the thing's flesh burned as if it was on fire.

All he could do was keep his distance.

All he could do was put X5-494 away.

 

 

 

 

Logan wasn’t sure why he had tried.

He should have just followed her out of the place in the silence that she wanted but he felt like he had to say something. Anything. Just a few words that could mean something other than what had been their collective failure to keep a transgenic life out of Ames White’s hands. It wasn’t so terrible to offer some kind of hope. Even if their last lead was gone.

But Max had cut him off before he could even finish his sentence.

Alec is in at least six different plastic bags by now Logan.

She had said it so assuredly that he had actually stopped in his tracks and watched her get onto her motorcycle. He didn’t move towards his car until well after she’d left. It had chilled him to the core to hear her say it. Mostly because it was something that was probably in all likelihood the truth. It was more than dangerous to keep the X5s around but it was also profitable. But a transgenic didn’t need to be a complete sum of their parts in order to be sold. In fact, it made sense to sell off the valuable creations piece by piece. There wasn’t much use or sense in keeping an X alive once you acquired one.

Or at least conventionally alive.

He noticed Max hadn’t mentioned that possibility instead. Alec could be still breathing somewhere but not necessarily all in one piece. Eyes wide open and preserved, strapped to a gurney in some unknown facility, frozen in stasis unable to anything but inhale and exhale in the dark. It was easier to believe he was just dead. He understood that well enough knowing what Max had seen her strange siblings go through. Logan couldn’t understand what that kind of pain that would be to withstand. But he did understand her feeling of having failed, even if he would never say anything like it to her out loud. Even if he wanted to assure her she hadn’t, he couldn’t quite do it because he felt the exact same way himself.

It was because of that that he decided not to shut off like Max had. He decided not to cast Alec off as another casualty of Manticore’s quiet secret war.

The days wore on until a week had gone by.

When they spoke it was brief and about things like traffic and weather. Logan saw her holding the question back behind all the mindless small talk, knowing that if he had heard something he would have told her by now, but looking for it anyway. When the next week started he saw she no longer was searching him silently for the hope she might have clung onto despite herself. Life went on more or less as usual. He kept silent when he overheard her on the telephone with a co-worker who had been looking for Alec. Without missing a beat she said that Alec had skipped town. Found a better gig somewhere else. East coast maybe.

Logan decided not to tell her he was keeping his feelers active. He knew it would just make her angry. Make her stay away from him and his daily notices that there was still no sign, trace or word about what may have happened.

If he couldn’t do anything else, he could at least take every one of those small sad defeats onto himself and suffer them for her.

 

 

 

Ames liked the air up in this part of the world.

It was far away from the crowded filth of the cities down south. It was still forest and mountain, lakes and almost unpolluted streams. The winding roads weren’t congested with traffic. The skies weren’t filled with roaring jets and the incessant chop of police helicopters. If he had to be here, he was pleased that his early morning runs and late night walks could be spent somewhere that he at least enjoyed. That didn’t happen even half as often as he wished. Especially when he had to set up a new shop for the powers that controlled him.

The facility he had chosen this time wasn’t a new one but their presence there relatively was. The place had seen its glory days of full active use back in the late 1990s. Some military R&D. Some officer intelligence training. Probably had a few ex ivy Prof Strategist holed up in here to direct combat on the opposite side of the planet at some point or another too. But, it was too expensive to keep running and staffed so it was shut down during the recession of the century close, sitting empty out here in the wilderness and unused until the Pulse hit.

After the Pulse places like this suddenly turned into premium real estate.

Various military had used it off and on since then because of its ideal isolation and extensive subterranean levels that made any visiting elite feel secure. In fact, Ames White knew that it was still listed as one of the three back up command centers for which two world leaders of North America may default to in an active war scenario. Nuclear. Bio. Land. All three? Anything was possible these days. But for now, its halls were his.

The concrete and steel structure had six floors and three wings above ground. It sat like a gray capital T low and half hidden between two rocky rises of a gorge. It was capable of housing and maintaining a good deal of people and their staff, but Ames wasn’t interested in a large contingent here. He wanted something a little bit more discreet than what the facility already had to offer.

Leaving all three upper wings alone, he had set up his operation exclusively below. All completely underground with its own ventilation systems and water processors, White had decided instead to make use of the three subterranean levels. The very top was for his own personal staff, the second exclusively for his team of scientists and their offices. But most importantly was the lowest level, the very bottom, almost one hundred feet below the valley floor.

Those were the labs.

The operation in Seattle had been more successful than any of them had really expected. Three male X-5s and one female X-6. The female was a complete surprise that just happened to be with one of the males when captured. And even better, she had been on the outside long enough to gain enough body fat to start ovulating. But the true prize was better than maybe all four of those transgenics put together.

They had found X5-494.

Not only would Ames now finally solve the little issue of 452’s whereabouts, he had the satisfaction that the male X-5 that had alluded him on more than one occasion would never see the light of day again. Who said there was never enough time in the day for personal vendetta? But he had been avoiding them all.

Everytime he lingered too close to the lower levels he could smell them. Hear them in their agony and unfullifilled releases. It was like a heady fog that settled on the lowest part of the complex, blinding him whenever he drew too near. He fought the thoughts of being alone with one of them and allowing himself his excesses. He erased each image of grasping hands and bodies whose clothing clung to each and every expanse of flesh it covered with sweat.

A fist made contact with the wall causing a passing lab tech to nervously walk faster past him.

He would make sure this assignment went by quickly and he would be done with it.

As soon as possible.

 

 

 

 

When Alec opened his eyes again, it was to more darkness.

Deep darkness that even his retinas weren’t able to form any sense of his surroundings. His issued trousers were damp in the front, and he groaned as he pushed his hand down hard between his legs. His body was relieving itself without him. He was surprised someone in a lab coat wasn’t right there to collect what he’d done and put it on the market. It made no difference what his body did to attempt to alleviate itself, the induction hadn’t faded, and neither had the thrum that rang through every inch of his muscle and sinew. He inhaled deeply, the simple act telling him the parameters of his confinement.

It was small.

Manticore was not altruistic enough to dispose of their errors humanely. To euthanize and reprocess. Even dogs were entitled to better ends. They could have done it. Alec's hands wandered to the plastic lines embedded under his skin. In the black he could not read any of the codes on the plastic bags he smelled. They could just as easily have been toxin, not immediately lethal. More hormones? A chemical of questionable origin? Summoning the strength to focus, he reached out and felt the magnetic stripping on the bags edge identifying it as just a nutrient drip.

The soft whir of a ventilation system. The dull cadence of footsteps yards above. Alec's senses were awake. He wondered why.

Alec tested his limbs. They were keeping him in the dark, cool air pumped and recycled from somewhere above. A normal human might say the place was cold. His throat was dry and sore. The delicate mucous membranes of his nose and eyes were irritated and dried out. Wherever he was, he'd been there for quite some time. Like storage. Slowly, he sat up, testing his reawakened joints, ripping the layers of medical tape from his arms. The needles had been removed before his transfer though he had no memory of it.

He took an experimental breath and found his lungs clear. A quick appraisal of his arms, the skin of his chest and belly showed he hadn't been operated on. The shakes had eased up for now. Alec sighed and lay down on the floor, folding his hands behind his head. They had not even provided a pallet. This was not a cell. It was a black box. Just a room. Maybe a crawl space. Who cared? They didn't.

He wondered how much it would hurt when they put him in the blender and pressed the button.

 

 

 

When one of the walls turned into a square of light, Alec found his sensitive eyes working against him momentarily as they struggled to adjust to the rapid change in his environment.

"Thought we were done talking, Ames." Alec found his voice, not looking up at the black figure that stood in the doorway.

"Not yet." Ames did not enter but motioned instead to the guards waiting beside him. With guns and minimal force they picked Alec up and began to escort him outside.

Alec let them, his body limp, and their scents confounding him to do anything but comply. The transgenic blinked in the fluorescent lit hall and was met by several scents of other X-5s that were somewhere nearby.

"I have something to show you."

"Not interested." Alec tried to speak without rasping but failed. "Kill me or let me rot."

"Cute." Ames responded, his smile strained. "Now move along."

"We're nothing but meat to you, aren't we?" Alec met his eyes, liking the mix of revulsion and agitation reflected back at him. And something else that looked almost… hungry.

"More precisely, abominations." Ames looked away, his gaze flickering in disgust. "Meat comes from animals. Animals belong here."

"Well, you've got an abomination in pain on your hands now." Alec grunted when one of the guards pushed him forward roughly by the bicep as they made a turn into a large seemingly empty room.

“Would you like to see a nice example of just exactly it is that you are?”

Alec felt himself shrug. How many more examples could he precisely experience and live through anyway? Ames went on as he walked towards a lone computer bank that sat along one wall.

“As soon as I found you, I arranged for a small experiment.”

“Sea monkeys?”

White ignored him.

“I had one of our previous transgenic finds be given the hormone that you had seemed to absorb with no problem.”

No problem. Alec shivered and felt himself trying to laugh.

“We subjected another male X-5 to only 50% of what it was estimated that you withstood.” White explained. “I believe your absorption period was approximately 14 days. For our test, we did it all at once.”

Alec imagined just exactly what that must have felt like and felt a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow.

“The subject rapidly went into cardiac arrest and died.”

“Lucky guy.” Alec heard himself say it and mean it.

“So we tried again.” White continued. “But a little more slowly this time, administering the hormone over the course of 48 hours.”

Alec looked up at him warily.

“And we got this.” The agent punched in a few keys on the terminal panel.

The metal door came up like some sterile industrial peep show.

It was another male X-5 on the other side. From the look of him he was in as deep as Alec was. Respiratory distress. Skin flushed. Tremors. Alec remembered him. Or some version of him. White blonde hair. Rims of ice blue Manticore eyes outside the deep black of his overly diluted pupils. Just because he had a face Alec had seen didn’t mean it had belonged to just one person.

“Open the vents.” White ordered. “Let’s introduce our boys.”

There was a far off noise deep in the walls and then a mechanical whir. A brush of warmer air met his face. Its gentle touch hit Alec like a wave, making him stagger backwards into the guards arms. He saw his vision slowly soak red, his muscles tensing and contracting into the stance his body took when about to engage in severe and heavy combat.

The X-5 on the other side had already hit the barred window coming at him, his impact actually making the group of armed men around Alec step back as the cage door groaned against the violence.

“Fascinating.” Agent White murmured.

The scent of the other induced male drove Alec back to the edge of all his limits. Instead of lust and yearning, it was raw hatred and a desperate need for supremacy.

“Looks like you two don’t seem to like each other very much.”

Alec blinked back the flood of his rage. It felt like it was pulled from him like a knife from his gut, ignited in his belly and clouding his brain with the hard buzz of insane static.

“We have a female you know. You’ll like her. She’s very pretty.” White said. “I wonder what would happen if we put both you boys in one room with her?”

Alec trembled with his checked power.

“With the moods you’re both in, “ Ames considered the X-5 on the other side of the window that was now being subdued with lance tasers back onto the floor. “I think you might literally rip each other apart.”

White smiled.

“Maybe even her too.”

Alec thought White might be absolutely correct.

 

 

It was late.

Way past his bedtime as it were. Logan yawned and entered yet another pilfered code in hopes of hacking the swiftly updated military site that he had been monitoring for days. A small soft beep announced he had new messages. Sipping his fourth cup of caffeine he wearily clicked over to his other monitor to check it.

Logan felt his coffee slosh over the rim, the burning fluid on his hand ignored, as he maximized the e-mail. One of his contacts had come through from the Chinese Embassy. It looked like some organic materials were set on the black market and snapped up by some of several military agents including China for astronomical sums. There was only one reason his contact would relay this information to him.

Organic materials.

Shoving his mug aside, Logan keyed into the attachment for any more details. His stomach churned as photos began to pop up in a queue at the bottom of the screen. The first dozen images that opened told him nothing. Bags of frozen plasma made Max’s words came back to him, echoing repeatedly in his head. Blood samples. Spinal fluid. Micro muscle samples so thin they were only a few cells thick. Even a clip of hair. There was a side notation that all the samples were super saturated with an unknown synthetic chemical that resembled a human hormone.

Logan paused. The samples all had DNA but without the R&D files on the genetic mapping it was all about as useful as bio waste. There was only one reason anyone would pay for things like this. It was from a transgenic. From the look of the organ cross samples, a very deceased transgenic.

With a pained sigh, Logan sat back and rubbed his face with his hands. The timing was just right that he may be looking at what he had been hoping he’d never find. If anything he might be able to find out just who put the samples out on the black market and— Logan blinked and sat back forward in his chair. He leaned closer to his monitor and looked carefully through the scattered photos. He stopped when he found the one that showed nothing but a clip of hair. He smiled a humorless smile.

The hair was black.

White pulled Alec out of hiding, why not other transgenics? Logan felt his heart beat faster as he fumbled for his telephone. Max’s voice was fuzzy and impatient on the line.

Logan swallowed once and took a deep breath before he spoke.

“I think I might have something.”

to be continued...


	5. part 5

Her hair was bloody and matted to the side of her swollen face.

Empty brown eyes glassy with tears stared vacantly ahead. She was an X-6, beaten to hell, half alive. Alec felt the rage, made worse by the scent, smoldering in his chest.

"This is X6-211. She's pleased to meet you." Ames said.

The female shuddered and gasped as she was forced into a folding chair. Alec could hear the uneven creak of her abused frame as she was handled by the soldiers.

"You can have what's left of her? That is, if X5-814 doesn't tear your throat out first."

Alec could not tear his eyes away from the girl. Her scent, heightened by her fear, was making him dizzy.

"You and X5-814 are going to prove or disprove a theory about transgenic mating traits." Ames explained.

Several of the observing scientists behind him exchanged a private laugh. So this was what this was. For kicks. Alec knew he was in trouble when he saw the heaving shoulders and strained muscles of the other transgenic mirror his own. He looked exactly how he felt, staring at the face of his own torture personified. The slightest touch would ignite his rage and then he would know nothing more until the other's flesh lay broken at his feet.

He knew that the other knew it too.

Once prodded forcefully into the enclosed plexiglass chamber, the other transgenic did not hesitate. A roundhouse kick, quicker than sight, was hurled at Alec's throat in greeting. If he had not felt the slight premature shift in air density and not dodged backwards with better reflexes, he'd find out how breathing felt through a crushed larynx. Alec pressed himself against the nearest wall, heart thudding wildly in his chest. The transgenic lunged again and Alec ducked out of the way, clipping him with a forward kick that forced his opponent away. He needed space. He needed air. To his relief, he noticed the other transgenic backing away slowly, assuming his stance on the opposite wall.

Attacking outright and prematurely had been a stupid move. He could see the other transgenic was slowly realizing this. He was less skilled, his conditioning and processing of a different make than Alec's own. This transgenic wasn't much bigger but his structure was fortified with strengths Alec didn't have. This guy was meant for heavy labor and Manticore infantry. Alec had been bred down to very the strands of his DNA to be like a precision scalpel, a thief, an assassin, to be unseen, and if seen, to be unnoticed. His hand to hand didn't rely on brute strength, it depended on agility and judgment.

He could see too, what effect his proximity was having on his opponent. For a few moments, all they did was stare. Alec's muscles were tensed and ready, every nerve receptive to the environment around him. He needed to size him up, learn him, be him. Only then could he worry about overcoming him. Fortunately, he was a quick learner. He could only hope the other wasn't quicker.

He tested him, striking out with a complex series of capoeira maneuvers, too quick for sight and aimed more for confusion than destruction. The other transgenic was forced to escape him. As he invaded each inch of ground his opponent tried to defend, he caught his scent and it nearly toppled him.

Worn hard and smooth, metallic and sharp as the impossible blue of his unblinking eyes. He smelled like a spent firearm, the low heavy burn of gunpowder and fire, smoke and noise. It was overpowering. Bracing himself once more, he clenched his teeth down against the painful, involuntary shuddering. Alec knew he had one asset not many of his kind realized they had.

A mouth.

"Heh." He said. "Never had to work this hard for a girl before, eh?"

A furious series of judo lunges answered him, making him keep close to the walls. Without thinking, he lashed out defensively, the hard bone of his knuckles clipping the other transgenic across the face. He watched as his opponent reeled back, catching himself quickly against the wall with one hand.

Alec groaned. This was going to turn into a travesty of avoidance. In fact, if the stamina of this transgenic's battery was anything like his, they'd be avoiding each other in this box until next week. Any immediate escalation would require some creativity and flexibility. First, Alec tried something he had honed down even finer than the art of assassination.

Flirting.

"What's your sign?" He asked in Mandarin.

"Shut up!" The transgenic growled back in the same language.

Alec was encouraged to find they had more than a desire to kill in common. He caught his breath as the transgenic's form suddenly shifted, a violent blur of color bursting to life on his blind side. He cursed when he felt the graze of the transgenic's missed blow cool the sweat at the back of his neck when he ducked. The blur came at him again with a low thrum, anticipating his moves, catching him on the thigh, the shoulder, tearing the material of his uniform.

Vaulting into a quick aerial, Alec landed on his feet on the opposite side of the room. When the transgenic's outline came clearly into view, he was panting heavily. Two hectic spots of red stood out on his milk pale face, sweat darkening white blonde hair to gold against his forehead. The transgenic moved again, this time trying to force himself behind him. Reflexively, Alec dropped to one knee, rolling away from a lethal downward thrust.

"You're getting closer." Alec panted, still crouched low to the ground. He staggered to his feet and launched his fists into a blur, making multiple contact with his opponent's face. "Tag. Yer it." He let a small smirk curl his lips through the red haze of his vision.

He could see the transgenic struggle to keep his footing, hear the frantic cadence of his breathing grow more desperate. A change of tactics suddenly occurred to him. It was a risk of control. Contact with the unstable hellion could mean one of two things. He needed to get closer and then he would know.

If he was going to be Kryptonite, why not go all the way?

"You can't hurt me." He said, meeting the transgenic's glittering eyes from the other side of the room, bouncing on the balls of his feet. As he expected, the words had their desired effect. Here came X-5 814 in full speed, teeth bared and fists ready.

With a yell, Alec let his body absorb the shock of pounds of pure, enraged muscle. He was not afraid to die. He needed the last eyes he looked into to know that.

He heard his skull crack against the hard surface of the wall behind him, tasting blood where he bit down hard on his tongue. The hands of the transgenic were closed around his throat. Weakly, he shifted his shoulder, trying to shrug him off. The scent was suffocating. The coppery organic twang of blood mingled with the pull and burn of his sweat. Alec gasped, forcing himself to keep his eyes open. He could feel the transgenic's chest heaving against his, aware of every movement, every change. He heard the heightened roar of his blood as the fingers of one trembling hand tightened around his throat.

Stupid. Stupid. He was so stupid. The Kryptonite worked both ways didn't it?

He smelled the bright trickle of blood appear at the corner of the other transgenic's mouth before he saw it.

It was too much.

His skin was much too warm. Alec struggled to breathe but it was like breathing in fumes, heady and disorienting. He almost gagged. A hand moved hard between his legs, pushing his thighs apart. The other hand was almost choking him, thumb pressed firm beneath his jaw, the X-5's mouth hurting his in its fierceness. He couldn't breathe and he didn't care. All he felt was the span of flesh of their stomachs touching like fire where their shirts had ridden up, all he wanted was to be crushed by hands whose strength he couldn't equal if he wanted. Fingers pressed into his wounded shoulder as a hand sought desperately under his shirt, fumbled at his waist, unable to touch or feel enough, fast enough, soon enough...

Alec heard himself panting, his mouth forced open, his lower lip caught in his opponents teeth, he let him hurt and bruise, pushing hips up against the thigh wedged between his legs. When both of his hands were slammed hard above his head and held there, Alec was too far gone to do anything but let the other transgenic do anything he wanted.

It was violence, this act. Pure and simple. Somewhere in the haze of his senses there was the pain, coming relentlessly with every touch. But worse by far was the need.

"Please." He heard the transgenic's voice quiver, weary and desperate. He pulled back a little. "It...it hurts. Can't...b-breathe."

"I-I know." Alec stammered.

814 swung his ankle out and floored them both.

Alec groaned under his weight.

It apparently took the guards more than a few moments to realize they were no longer fighting. The doors were buzzed open. It was already too late, it was too much. The contact. The scent. The feel of a body pressed down over his own. With a harsh moan, Alec struggled to look up and find White. He saw all the people standing there behind the reinforced plexiglass just watching them like the animals the Agent claimed they had no relation to. He thought of all the cameras that were recording them, footage that would be rewatched and analyzed. Alec thought he might be sick when the pleading look he knew he had was met by Ames White. White could end this right now. White could stop this from happening in front this horrible detached audience of strangers wanting to dissect him.

White only smiled.

Alec felt himself shudder and seize, writhing under the other's weight, his vision going dark as all the blood in his body rushed away and was replaced with a calm. He grasped out when he felt X5-814 being pulled away from him, and as soon as his body was cool and unhindered, he fell back gasping. All he saw before everything went black was Ames White behind the glass.

And he could not read the look that met him there.

 

 

 

 

Alec slowly opened his eyes to the dark.

After the show the powers that be had gotten a good look at what they knew on paper. Transgenics were stronger and faster, most would say better than a human being. Looks like it had made the staff on property a little nervous because he wasn't left unrestrained in his cell this time. He could hear the nearest cell to him, 814, smell him struggling, his smell mingling with someone else. Had 814 been engineered like he had? Could he hear Alec staying perfectly still so very close by? Did he know he could hear Ames and smell him as 814 cried out along the line of pain and pleasure? Desperate and pleading, as hopeful for release as Alec had been on the floor in front of so many eyes.

White's smell overpowered everything else, seeping in around him like fumes from a smoldering fire, spreading like black smoke up over the ceiling and pouring down the corners. He did smell like an X but there was something else there. Older. Deeper. Heavy and aglow like an ember. A natural transgenic. There was silence from beyond his walls, the only thing Alec could detect was the slow labored breathing of 814 and fading footsteps of the man that had tormented him.

But the scent lingered.

With each deep inhale Alec made, one more piece of his plan formed in his mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armed lab techs came and reconnected him to a feeding tube who knew what else.

Ignoring his hissing when they jabbed needle after needle into his arms, they did their work quickly and left. For some reason that could only mean they were going to be moving him soon, they left him only in hand binds. It enabled him to move to his corner and get the other transgenic's attention. When he finally did, he was relieved to see they had reduced him to wrist restraints as well. The way they were situated they could only see each other's hands through the narrow slit of space on the side of their containers. That was just fine.

Hands were all they needed.

They're watching us.

The X hand coded to him through the slated bars.

Alec quickly handed coded back the sign to use Code Alpha Zulu. It incorporated every hand code they knew in a rapid shifting backwards pattern. Once their observers decoded one hand sign they'd be beyond them moving into another dozen languages, rhythms and alphabets. It was taught for hostage capture situations. Alec supposed this was it.

I'm Alec. Do you have a name?

841

A real name.

Good God, he reminded himself of Max. And for the first time in a long time he allowed himself to picture her face clearly and remember the timber of her voice. He wondered if she was on her bike right now express speeding down the side streets to make Normal's ridiculous quotas. Alec felt his jaw clench. He never thought he might remotely miss than dank basement dump bustling full of messengers and noise. He put it out of his mind.

The X-5 coded hesitantly back, his shaking hands barely legible.

On the outside, they used to call me Erik.

Alec watched him, beyond in the shadows, shudder and try to stay upright.

They're going to kill us. Erik signed weakly.

Alec smirked. Not if we leave before we give them a chance. His smirk died. He wanted to ask if Ames had hurt him but he already knew what the agent had done. If their roles were reversed he wouldn't want that question either.

He glanced up at the three rotating cameras that observed them.

If we can keep it together long enough, I think we have a shot at getting out of here.

He heard Erik sit back and lower his hands making him go out of sight.

It's not your fault. Alec swallowed, hoping Erik was still watching and trying not to show his shame too with his own trembling hands. It was simmering hard, but he didn't have time for it now that he could see a chance. Alone he was toast, but with help? This Erik could be reasoned with and Ames had no idea what one X-5 was capable of let alone two that were organized.

Undoubtedly their hand code was being read, but they both made sure it'd be mistaken for something benign. Cramped quarters. Misery. Useless hoping aloud. They feigned the typical talk of the confined.

It was time Ames got another lesson about transgenics.

 

 

 

 

Ames watched the procession carefully from the command center

Dozens of close circuit camera allowed his men to monitor any part of the complex at any given moment. The focus at the moment, was the lower labs. The two surviving X-5 males were being taken out of their cells for the last time.

494 was looking forward to a nice long stint in an examining chair until 452's zip code and address was revealed. 814 was already sold to several different South African factions, each demanding their own vital and separate piece. When they were done with 494 he had the infernal luck of being acquired by a firm that preferred him alive and intact. His staff had two operating rooms prepped for 814's dissection, and subsequent brain death. It was tricky to ship but with the price they were paying it was no trouble at all--

"Huh."

Ames White turned his attention to the small sound of one of the men that sat along the bank of screens.

"Problem?" He asked from over his shoulder.

"I'm not sure."

The man's monitor showed 494 being escorted swiftly to what Ames had dubbed an interrogation room.

"Where's 814? Has he been prepped for surgery yet?"

The other transgenic's holding cell was empty but the doctor's staff in the clean room had not received him just quite yet.

"Damn." Another man along the row muttered.

Ames moved over to him, a sinking feeling in his gut. "What is it?"

"We lost cameras 12, 13 and 14, signal just completely cut out."

Ames leaned in and took over his keyboard. "What about the backup--"

"Lost 39 through 45!" Someone else called out

Ames felt his heart start to beat faster. "Where are the backups?" He roared.

"Unavailable sir--"

"20-29 feeds are down.

Ames watched as each screen blinked off into lines of monochromatic static. Each angle of 494 being lead down corridor after corridor blinked out until there was only one left. Ames stared at it. X5-494 looked up into the camera over his shoulder and winked. It was right then that everything including the lights went black, the energy grid dying in a slow sigh.

The power to the entire facility had been cut off.

Ames made a fist in the dark.

"Lock everything down, seal all exits."

"Sir?"

"The X-5's are loose."

 

to be continued...


	6. part 6

It was snowing hard up there.

The wind was so hard he had trouble keeping the car going in a straight line, the howl of it sending the white flurry of snow sideways across their slow but steady path up the winding roads. He had insisted they stop and buy her a jacket, one of those nylon types with the faux fur along the hood. Without one you just didn't look right around the people that chose to populate these mountains. The temperature was too low to be walking around like it suited you. Transgenics forgot sometimes when they should appear uncomfortable.

It was a small town with check points at the entries of the two main roads. Typical for these times when all the local governments took it upon themselves to guard their own carefully maintained sanctuaries from the hordes of city dwellers that had migrated north since the Pulse. The exodus had slowed to a crawl these days but the one horse towns still upheld their own set of laws. They usually didn't give you much trouble if you didn't look the part, and Logan’s story of being honeymooners might have annoyed Max, but it got them in and out of the check points in no time flat.

Proper paper work helped too. Forged of course. Logan sometimes wondered if there was a single person traveling these northern roads that had a legit ID on them. When you left the cities walls it was usually for some pretty drastic reasons. Good or bad. Logan's contact had gotten them much further than he thought was possible.

The deceased transgenic whose photos Logan had carefully locked on his laptop was hard to trace but with the right chain of just the right people, nothing was completely a secret. He'd gotten the dead transgenic's designation, which despite the black hair samples, was a cold relief when it did not contain any of the numbers associated with Alec. The designation brought a joyless spark of hope and even a little bit of optimism but it was in so far, not much use to them despite the thrill the contact had in achieving the secret. Logan catalogued it away with all other known transgenics and wondered as he did, if this one had had a name.

But that wasn’t all Logan had gotten from his contact.

What was much more interesting was the origin of the body and when and where the samples were taken. It had gotten a little vague then. Canada was a large and dark country. After the hit to the continent's computer systems, the north had been hit the hardest in regard to their power plants and less than half the country had reliable power. It was a place you could easily run and hide. It had dark corners within darker corners and if you wanted to vanish, it was fairly easy to do just that. If the men of Manticore wanted to go even further off the radar, it would take more than a good head start and an informant to find them.

However, “North” was not exactly a location. Logan had gotten so much information and it was as if they had just hit another brick wall. But then something happened that neither Logan or Max could quite believe. A reliable informer that had used the north country to make a disappearing act of his own suddenly reappeared in Logan's inbox.

There was a doctor, used to be a military field surgeon but had taken up in a small clinic just west of the mountains and had also taken up a new name and life. His contact thought it would be of interest to Logan that a John Doe appeared in the clinic emergency just that night. Barely a few hours ago. Beaten all to hell and incoherent, the patient had only one identifying mark.

A barcode tattoo on the back of his neck.

And he added, Logan had better not take his time.

The man was dying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn't difficult to find the small clinic. It sat in the even smaller town that lined the valley floor on the outskirts of a snowy mountain range that reached forever on both ends of the horizon. It also wasn’t difficult because the town it resided in had about ten permanent structures total.

Set up for the surrounding population that lived isolated and scattered through the hills and canyons, it was open to just about anyone that stumbled through its doors. Logan signed a fake name at the small desk that sat at its front. It was manned by one woman, her hair going gray and her smile firmly lined from those self rolled cigarettes that were the cheapest on the market. He showed her his fake ID that made he and Max 'Medical Staff' from the nearest police precinct which was almost 50 miles away down in the next valley.

She barely looked at the IDS before buzzing them in past the doors.

“Down there, keep to your right,” she told them. “Might be sleeping.”

Max eagerly pushed past Logan and took up at a brisk pace down the dimly lit passage. She stopped and raised her head, smelling the air.

“He’s here.” She whispered in soft disbelief.

Ignoring the protests of the nurses, Max entered each room, swinging back curtains that were in her way and opening closed doors that said ‘Do not Enter’.

“ _Alec!_ ” She finally just yelled out. “ _Alec!_ ”

Logan tried to make reassuring faces to the flustered and angry staff but he felt Max’s urgency just the same. He wanted to see Alec laying in one of these beds. He wanted to shake his hand and start figuring out a way to get him the hell out of here and back home.

It turned out to be the last room. Logan followed in Max’s wake, the shrill rip of the curtain being pulled away revealed the man that lay hurt, his bleeding wounds staunched. He turned to look at them in alarm, his movements weakened by injury but his scent... The smell struck Logan as he got to Max’s side. It was low and heavy like burnt sugar, scorched vanilla and fresh clean sweat.

Logan swallowed and stepped back in confusion.

“Wh-who are you?” Max demanded.

The man was made of a large grade, tall, wide, pale hair and paler eyes. Made just normal enough to pass in society, but just odd enough to betray what powers might lay beneath. Logan kept his confusion in but Max made her frustration be heard out loud, advancing and clutching the collar of the medical gown in a low growl that made the man in the bed visibly nervous.

Whoever this X-5 was, he wasn’t Alec.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Did you live in Seattle?” Logan asked softly.

“Y-yes sir.” He managed. “Worked for the city department. Mostly sewer work.”

With the water mains. Logan sat down with a sigh, White must have gotten this poor bastard almost right off the bat. He saw the now familiar strain in the transgenic’s muscles, the frantic energy he kept in check despite his injuries. The way he kept looking away from them both, especially Max.

“Are there others? Where you were taken?”

Max waited for his answer intently.

“White he, he, I don’t know. They just disappear. One at a time.” The X said softly. “I barely got out after the fires started, 494, he was with me but by the time I made it to the truck… they’d got him—“

Max stood. "494-"

Logan found himself standing too. “Alec, you saw Alec. You saw Alec there?”

The X-5 looked down, shame coloring his pale skin. "Dead." The transgenic breathed out painfully. "No way he got out of there-"

"But you saw him! Alive? Where?" Max’s heart was beating so fast her breathing matched its rhythm, her grip on the transgenic tight and threatening.

“I saw him in the labs almost every day,” He mumbled. “49- Alec, he- he made a plan, we’d rig the computer’s with a spiral virus so it would shut everything down. I don’t know how he did his end but I hacked into a terminal when they left me locked down in a physicians prep room for a few minutes.”

Logan saw the pale blue eyes grow cloudy for a moment, the strange brand of fear the transgenics used plain on his face. They faced fear like children. Bewildered and confused.

“They were going to operate on me.”

The images of the photos of the dissected X-5 flashed briefly through Logan’s mind but he brushed them away. This X-5 had somehow escaped that fate and he was more or less safe. Logan looked up grimly the vitals that ran across an over head computer display. Although they were having a lucid conversation, this transgenic was in pretty bad shape. Multiple gun shot wounds had damaged him, and the blood they were giving him to replenish his supply was woefully the wrong and very human kind.

“It worked right away.” The X continued. “It started some fires. Turned off the lights. Then we just moved.”

Logan guessed this solider had been made for heavy nocturnal operations with no need for night vision equipment. It would explain the laborious sewer job and exactly why he was able to get out of a total power outage situation in a lock down facility and Alec somehow couldn’t.

He looked over at the other transgenic in the room. Her eyes were locked on the floor, her adrenaline finally waning, her hope shifted back to baffled confusion. Logan realized he’d just seen that look in the wounded X-5’s eyes. It was fear.

"Max?" Logan placed a hand on her arm, and swallowed nervously.

She sat back and gestured towards the door with her chin.

"Shut the door." She used the plastic tube going into the X-5's arm to wrap around her own upper arm.

Logan followed her curt directions to give them privacy.

"What are you doing?"

Max removed the needle from the transgenic's arm and slid it into her own flesh, making a circuit between them and bypassing the fluid that had been placed there.

"Saving his life."

Logan watched the dark red line travel quickly through the clear tubing and into the incision in the transgenic's arm. Max's expression was flat. There was nothing like compassion or sympathy in her eyes, not even relief when the transgenic's pained breaths grew slow and easy and his heart rate evened out. She was detached, eyes staring straight ahead, seeing little.

Suddenly her head snapped up.

"Who are you?"

A young girl had entered the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logan watched Max study the girl carefully.

He did the same. He didn't know if it was all his exposure to transgenics or just simple observance that caused him to begin to recognize the certain traits of Manticore, but he'd never seen anyone like her before. Unlike the white blue eyes of the wounded transgenic in the bed, her eyes were a shade of brown he'd never seen. It was as if she was lit up from the inside, her eyes flashing like an animal with eye shine. She seemed to know they were strange and kept her gaze trained downwards as much as possible. Her hair was too gold, her skin was perfectly pale.

"X-6." Was all Max said softly.

"Are you okay? What's your name?" Logan asked, overwhelmed slightly by her youth. He had never seen a transgenic this age, her bruised face and wide frightened eyes made him half sick.

"She can't talk." Max muttered to him.

Logan watched as they exchanged hand signs, quickly and effortlessly as any other foreign language. He wasn't sure how Max knew, and he wondered if her muteness was engineered or some kind of horrible mistake a scientist made in her genetic mapping. Maybe it was less than a mistake. Maybe it was function they hadn't deemed completely necessary for her role in their plans. With a sick sigh, Logan wondered if the men who had bruised her up had even known she was unable to answer their questions even if she had wanted to.

“She drove the truck that got them out of there.” Max said out loud.

She turned her attention back to the girl.

"Tell me how to find this place."

The X-6 nodded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was amazing all that could happen in the span of a few hours.

The auxiliary power had finally come up on level one. The second third levels below were still in total darkness, crews working the floors with flashlights to reach the transformers that had been blown with the computer override that jumped all the circuit breakers and let them cycle until they fried.

Transgenics. They were pretty clever when you gave them even the slightest of chances. But that was what this place had been assembled for. A place for no chance at all. But it had still happened.

And it had happened on his watch.

A large bank of computer monitors on a large metal rack stood tall and in his path. With strength he shouldn’t have he flung it out of his way, shattering glass and showering glittering sparks behind him. The major fires that had started were under control but teams were still working on the smaller more prolific electronic fires. They had had worked their countless ways into the walls and into some of the third floor bottom labs.

Agent Ames White grabbed a flash light from one of the men busy taking a panel down off the wall, wires flashing and flickering with blue fire across the corridor floors.

"Where is he?" Ames asked. He was surprised at the sound of calm in his voice.

"Found him down by the loading dock sir."

Ames nodded in the dim chaotic light of flash lights and hurried movement of people working, walking and talking in every direction. It was strangely quiet, the core of the subterranean structure shut down, leaving them all in murky empty echo of their own footsteps and the brief hectic spurts of information on the radios from the men chasing what was left of the fires.

He was surprised the three transgenics had gotten as far as the level 1 loading area, and another emotional sensation he owned all together relayed just how he felt about the fact that two of the things had managed to flee the facilities premises that way. In the fire, in the dark, with his own personal guards laying down a spread of bullets that should have cut them all into pieces. So many pieces they'd have trouble putting them back to together for sale. However, the transgenics had eluded them and vanished into the surrounding woods like ghosts. He had a few helicopters up looking for them as soon as he could get them in the air. But they hadn't spotted anything but an abandoned military truck. The canyons and ravines appeared empty.

But they left one behind.

Or it left itself behind so the other two had a chance. Who knew what transpired in the world of transgenic ethics? The X-6 female was no major loss, her ovaries and other marketable items had already been extracted, but the male X-5 had already been sold. Proverbially speaking, the check had already been cashed. Ames White was extremely unhappy.

When he finally got to the utility room they had converted to secure the remaining X-5, he paused for a moment before he motioned for the crossed machine guns to part to allow him access.

There he was.

X5-494

The bullets hadn't quite ripped him apart but they had gotten him in the upper right and lower quadrant of his body. He'd put up some fight, overturned boxes of sampling tubes lay scattered, an entire metal shelf fallen on its side. Behind the chaos, he heard him panting. His blood pumped out through his wounds as a medic pressed a wad of gauze heavy over the worst of it. He lay in a heap, his legs sprawled, sweat making his clothes settle close against his skin. He was ended even if he wouldn't admit it. To White, this meeting would have been easier had he been unconscious. He could manage the scent without the rest. His eyes were bright and alert and trained on him.

White blinked several times to clear his head with the onslaught of scents combined in the confines of the small room. The smell of him boiled white hot with the mixture of the persistent scent of fire. The blood added to the burn of melted plastic, singed circuit boards, smoldering fiberglass insulation, and the black oily smoke that lingered up around the ceilings. Thick and heavy, like the red blood flowing from the wounds, Ames felt it fuel and join with his rage, a sweet melding of emotions that he never found very far apart in the first place, desire and violence fusing into one solid need.

"G-Good to see ya Ames." 494 wheezed, his teeth chattering as his body was settling nicely into shock. "I think I messed up your tree fort."

“You.” Ames White said. “Why is it always you?”

494 tried to shrug and managed a weak smile from where he lay on the floor.

"Everyone." Ames hissed. "Out.”

Medics and armed men looked at each other before they wordlessly complied, filing after each other in the small space and out the door.

Ames knelt over him, his anger surpassing any rational reaction he could have ever normally exacted. To his surprise, he found a hungry calm. This body under him, the smell of his life pumping slowly out into the air, the transgenic's short panting exhales of pain. Heavy and sweet, low and burning not unlike the unchecked fires that dotted the maze of his landscape.

Conquering his distaste, Ames pushed his hand under the issued shirt, the thick hot wet fabric bunching up through his fingers, revealing one of the bullet wounds, and 494's chest, stained red and slick. 494's angry hiss was hot on his face.

“Why… why is it whenever I turn around, I see 495?”

He didn't want the freak to speak. Didn't want to hear the retort through shaky breaths, the false bravado. He pressed his cheek against the transgenic’s, like an animal in greeting, the oily feel of blood letting him slide his face gently until their chins met. 494 was staring at him, startled into remaining still. His eyes stayed wide while Ames's thumb pulled down his lip and jaw, opening his mouth to his own, tongue tasting the hot coppery tang of blood, inhaling all of his scents of anger, fear, pain.... Ames moaned a little into the X-5’s mouth, pushing him down under him, his hands pulling Alec's hips down, forcing his thighs apart. Pale red speckled hands came up weakly against Ames's chest and face.

Ames didn't mind the resistance. He preferred it, in fact. He marveled at the fact that the hormone still was affecting them both even now, after so much damage had been sustained. When so much was there to lose, chemistry still ruled them both like mindless fools. 494's eyes half closed, his breathing going too fast, too hard. From Ames's proximity or his pain. Or both.

"D-Don’t… _uhhdon’t_ —“

Ames’ shut him up. Sitting forward and pressing him down by the chest, he filled his mouth with hot damp flesh, holding a hand full of his short cropped hair, and running a hand over hard lines of the muscle, sliding over barely tended open wounds just to make the thing under him cry out in louder noises when he wanted to hear them. He withdrew and leaned down to cup the X-5’s chin in his grip.

“You think it’s been bad?" Ames whispered angrily into his mouth as he worked his hand slow and messy between the transgenics thighs. “Do you think this has been bad for you?”

494 cried out with a cut off groan when Ames let what he provided as pleasure shift to pain and back again. 494 struggled to look at him, panic and humiliation mixed hopelessly in his eyes. Ames tasted the blood that had pooled at the base of his throat, biting down into it and licking his lips.

"Do you even know what pain is?"

494 moaned as the hands worked further into his issued fatigues, sliding them down his sweat slicked thighs, Ames felt his skin glow like fire at the thought of bringing the freak this close to it all the while he was slowly dying. It was too stifling, his flesh igniting wherever it touched the trangenic’s. Fighting to breathe, his mouth found the side of the throat, inhaling in the soft hollow of flesh below the ear, the scent driving him as he pushed impossibly slow. His mind barely registering the overwhelming pleasure of it, his arms crushing the prone body closer, relishing the choked cries of pain that were smothered in his mouth as he brutally tasted what he wanted.

He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t take himself one inch away from the smell and feel of it. His hands gripped the sweaty undersides of knees and pushed the struggling transgenic hard against the wall. It was all he had wanted since he’d seen the cursed X half naked and alone up on top of the Space Needle. It was all he could think about when he passed the labs and caught scent of them down there, unguarded and shackled. It was unrelenting. It was unbelievable. It was disgusting.

Ames stood, his mouth smeared red with blood, his clothes and hands stained with it. His heart pounded in his ears, every fiber of his being wanted to lay back down over that body and make it comply to him. Open to him. Come for him. Over and over again until there wasn’t a breath left in its body…

“ _You_ … you did this to me Alec,” Ames spit. 

Breathless, the transgenic painfully considered him from the floor, still reeling from the contact, trying to get his clothes back where they had been before and failing.

Somehow he was smiling.

“Y-You, you called me Alec.”

“ _Medic!_ ”

The door opened again and uniformed men stepped in with their equipment. They paused at Agent White at first, thinking perhaps he had been attacked just as they stood several meters away just outside the door.

But they quickly saw their error and casting their eyes down, went to attend the transgenic that lay struggling for breath on the floor.

This torture was going to end.

At least for Ames White.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had never been intended for Ordinaries. Its origins dated back to much crueler times. For himself, Ames thought quite highly of what he termed his enhanced little magic trick. The tank looked ordinary and in fact it was. Some wrought iron adjustments here and there to immobilize and a tacked on telemetry device to denote progress and the whole thing was really quite fundamental.

He put them in alive and took them out his.

And most importantly, behind all that glass and all those gallons of water, Ames White couldn’t smell a God damn thing.

"Sir?"

The tech, clad in gear reserved for operations in sub-zero terrain, moved urgently to speak with Ames.

"Report."

"We are approaching the 25 minute mark."

"Vitals?"

"Unstable. At this stage harmful."

Harmful was a soft word in Ames' language.

"Irreversible?"

The tech's eyes traveled swiftly to the neon readings of the LCD screen against the tank's surface.

"Not yet," he admitted reluctantly.

Ames smiled.

"Good." He clapped the man on the shoulder and took a step forward.

It was truly a thing of beauty.

He passed his hand over the chill surface, wiping away the frosted condensation.

494 had been stripped to his thermal trainers, a single electrode strapped to his wrist. Curled in a fetal position at the bottom of the tank, head bent to knees, eyes closed, still as a preserved specimen.

But his vitals showed he was very much alive.

The water had turned a sickly pale pink from his wounds, the blood viscous and dark from lack of oxygen, pumping sluggishly into the clear fluid. It had slowed minutes ago, congealing with the frigid water.

His blood was a study unto itself.

The oxygen binding molecules of hemoglobin in his blood had been designed to survive extreme conditions, fixing with greater tenacity to the blood cells, renewing almost instantaneously. He had been under for 25 minutes. No chance for oxygen renewal. His heart recirculating old concentrated blood over and over and over.

An Ordinary would have expired within minutes.

Even his transgenic physiology employed the same survival mechanics. The freezing temperature of the water had slowed his metabolism, his heart rhythm decreased into brachycardia. It would not be long now before it stopped altogether but even then he could survive a few minutes longer before everything shut down, went offline, got spoiled.

It was very possible that when they pulled him out this time, his brain would be permanently affected. Oh well, liabilities were liabilities. The team in Johannesburg would have to accept some damage in transit.

He had attempted to free himself at first, struggling against the heavy iron lid at the top, the only way in or out of his aqueous environment. Both ankles had been strapped down with weights. That hadn't stopped him from trying a little. He'd gotten the message quick enough when the firm plexiglass refused to give way beneath his powerful kicks, his fists useless though thrown with precision.

He'd stopped moving altogether.

Which was how Ames found him now.

Slowly he knelt down to the transgenic's level, peered at the pale, bloodless face. Proximity to the X5 no longer had any effect, the frigid temperature had tampered with the makeup of his blood so profoundly that it quieted the hormone raging in his system. Even outside the water, he knew he would feel nothing, even if he touched the cold, hard flesh. He had ceased to sweat, did not leave any scent, even the molecules in his saliva would be dulled. Grinning, he tapped hard on the glass.

The transgenic's eyes snapped open reflexively, wide and unseeing. Startled, Ames withdrew.

"Alright." He said.

The surrounding unit acted with haste. A guard in a wetsuit was lowered into the tank to retrieve 494, unbinding his shackles and hauling him up to the surface.

"He's not breathing sir." The guard reported. "No cardiac activity."

The cyanotic blue of 494's lips and the lack of response to the beam of light shone directly in his eye did not faze Ames in the least. The limp body was transferred quickly to the cement floor, the team of medical personnel swarming around him. They knew what to do. After all, this was their third time.

Ames waited patiently against the door as they brought 494 back from the dead. Water was suctioned from paralyzed lungs, irritated back into some mimicry of function. Compressions and epinephrine restarted his heart. The rush of air choked him, offending and foreign in his airway. The strained wheeze was music to his ears.

"We have a pulse."

Ames took this as his signal to begin.

Coughing and shuddering, 494 moaned. A blanket was thrown over his body in a rudimentary attempt to conserve heat. Ames crouched down beside him.

"Permission to start a warm saline drip--" The medic watching the readings on the LCD ventured nervously.

"Denied."

Ames did not acknowledge him, his attention focused on 494.

"Welcome back." He smiled.

"Hey Ames." Alec's voice rasped, barely audible through his shivers.

"Amazing." Ames whistled. "How you can't seem to die."

"Like a roach." Though his teeth chattered convulsively, Alec managed a smile.

Ames leaned in, grasping Alec's chin in his hand, his smell almost gone to nothing. "I've been more than exceedingly kind up until this point 494, I've done everything short of tucking you into bed at night.“

If he thought this transgenic knew even vaguely where the escaped X series had gone he would have stripped his skin slowly from his body until he spilled it out like his body would everything else. But what he really wanted to know would warrant more persuasion than that. And his buyers had set him on a time table.

“Tell me now. While we still have time. Where...is....452?"

"D-Disneyworld."

Ames sighed.

"Put him in again."

No one moved. Ames felt the back of his eyes grow hot.

"That was an order," he repeated.

The head of the medical unit intervened.

"Sir. He's too unstable. If we put him under again, the damage to his internal organs will make him unviable. He'll be worthless on the market."

Ames gritted his teeth. On the floor, Alec's voice rose up to taunt him weakly.

"Nyah-nyah-nyahhhh."

Ames smiled shortly. "You see, you have lack of faith in our 494. I think he’ll do just fine. I want him back in. And drop the temperature by 10 degrees.”

The transgenic's eyes closed, turning his head quickly to the side so he could cough up more fluid from his lungs.

"N-no p-problem." He choked, fighting every word. "Maybe I'll freeze s-solid."

Ames sighed. "That would be convenient, your new owners want you intact."

The transgenic shuddered violently, seized by another fit of coughing.

"And unfortunately, alive." Ames turned to the medic waiting in the background. At his nod, the man knelt down and prodded the inside of Alec's arm with latex gloved fingers. It took him almost a minute to locate the pale blue vein beneath the stark white flesh.

Weakly, the transgenic obeyed the order to make a fist, clenching trembling fingers. He jerked mildly when the needle entered his flesh, warm saline pumping at a timed rate through his fractured system. Within a minute, his tremors slowed and ceased, his color evening out. The medic leaned over to get a pressure reading.

"Stabilizing."

Ames looked down at him.

"Your new owners will adore you. They have you scheduled for all kinds of fun things. Rejection studies, healing factors, regeneration. Just think? You'll help advance a generation."

"Yay." The transgenic lay unmoving on the floor.

He could see the pale lips tremble lightly, a weak smile forming, eyes empty and glazed. He'd seen that look before. In the eyes of the executed and the lost, on souls who had nothing left to lose.

He was cracking.

"We ready?" He asked the medic.

"Affirmative."

"Don't want to come back...." The transgenic breathed weakly as hands reached for him, lifting him. "Stop... want... to stop."

Ames briefly imagined the pain involved to be cycled back and forth from the edge and back again. Repeatedly and without pause. It must be close to unbearable.

"If you stop for good, I don't get paid."

494 barked a tired laugh as he was wrenched up and held in place, leaning limply against the shoulder of the guard. Ames spoke close to his ear.

"The sooner you tell me where I can find 452. The sooner this ends."

"That's..." The transgenic wheezed with difficulty, a weak laugh making his shoulders shake. "...exceedingly ...kind."

"Put him in."

"Again." The transgenic was trying not to laugh now, his shoulders shook uncontrollably as he fought a strange smile. "Again. And again. And again! I'll come back ya know. I always come back!"

He wouldn't shut up. Not when the heavy rusted iron lid was lifted. Not when his hands and ankles were bound once more and weighted. Not when he was lowered slowly back into the cold pinkish hell.

"What are you afraid of Ames?" With his last breath before he went under, his gaze flickering to one of the lab techs and addressing her instead. "That your parents will find out?"

Something there, within all the X-5 stubborn refusal to bend, had finally in fact, snapped into pieces.

"Find out." Alec sputtered and gasped as the water rushed up to his face. "Find out wh-what you like to do--"

The smart oddly placed comments had started to blur into some frantic lunacy. Like all the others that Ames had tested through these trials, they finally gone someplace beyond the pain. Beyond fear. If the transgenic had ever shied from the concept of his own demise he didn't any longer. He feared returning back from it. Ames smiled as the transgenic momentarily thrashed when he became completely submerged once again.

They always came out at the other end all his.

All completely his.


	7. Chapter 7

It was a spooky building.

The massive structure loomed right out of the thick pine forest, only its very upper floor visible from any kind of distance.

It was when they drew closer to it that Logan could really see the thing and its actual size. Sitting deep in a gorge, it was an entire six stories of concrete, broad slabs tinted brown with water stains. It was covered in tall and narrow slits for windows, like some abandoned fortress guarding nothing at all. The towering woods grew almost right up to its walls, miles and miles of frigid tangled wilderness providing a better fence than any chain links with barbed wire.

Considering the looks of the place they got in lot easier than Logan could have ever hoped. There was only one road that lead up anywhere near it, and they had gone by foot as soon as they got close to it on the hand drawn map. It cost them time but there was only so quickly Logan could go. He felt some guilt at his inability to travel as fast as Max could have on her own, but he did not want her to vanish in these woods like Alec had. Without an argument, she had begrudgingly slowed her pace to match the fastest of his. By night fall they had begun to skirt unnoticed around the facility’s perimeter. Max noted the lack of security wasn’t just due to its careful isolation. The facility wasn’t exactly right back up to speed yet.

That hack Alec and the other X-5 had done on their computer system had done a pretty good job at disabling the place. Only a few of the perimeter floodlights were on and the few cameras that Max carefully found and checked were dead. Logan didn’t say anything when he followed Max into the darkness of the ground floor of the vast and quiet gray cement structure.

According to what Max had been told, the upper floors were all supposed to be empty. They walked them like shadows, the dusty tile silent under their feet. Rows after rows of shut doors leading to who knew what, Logan just followed Max's cautious passage, confident she would find the way it took to get them downwards. Down to the subterranean levels.

The first flight of stairs they took, Logan started to feel the weight of the building start to crush down on top of his head. They had one flashlight between them and without even the meager light of the outside floods to shine faintly through a window it became utterly and absolutely black. However, they found signs of life the lower they went.

A supply room with a few lab coats and a few much better flashlights allowed them to continue through the intermittent nervous staff completely unnoticed. The second flight of stairs were longer, and steeper. Another floor down revealed blackened walls and the fried scent of electronics. Acrid with fire retardant foam and the lingering heavy smell of thick oily smoke. Max incredibly noticed a landmark that she’d been provided by the young X-6. A floor and cross section number that was almost half burned away on the wall in the beam of her flashlight gave her their exact location.

Logan shared a small smile with her in the dim light.

They might find Alec, but he wasn’t quite so sure anymore that they’d find him alive. Not in this bleak place that sat in the below the snow drifts. With its lights all out and its windows sitting quiet and dark somewhere above them. The bowels of the building were gutted and filled with worried flitting shadows of men intent on nothing but their own departure.

This place didn’t seem like it could hold anything much at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec didn't twitch at the first round of the alarm.

Dull red rotating lights came on around him. He could hear people all around the complex. Below him and above him. Voices were far off and muted. Somewhere. Everywhere. He smelled the strong smolder of smoke. Melted plastic molded to metal. Toxic fumes following the sluggish current of the over loaded ventilation system.

Alec didn’t remember being put here.

He'd come back from the red haze half encased. A foam padded box lined with a network of tubes feeding the IVs which ran from his arms. The foam was cut to the shape of his body, contoured perfectly to the curve of his spine and the width of his hips. A specialized package to deliver human cargo. Times sure had improved since the slave days. He was strapped in securely, no room for movement. Even as he weakly tested his limbs, bound in the customized lining of the box, he knew he would not be leaving. He would wait for the lid. Or maybe more smoke. Whichever got there first.

He heard voices but his eyes could only focus on the steady pulse of the red light that turned slowly above. Urgent voices. Close by, very close. Maybe even in the same room.

“Help me Logan!”

Someone was trying to pull his arm free of the stiff foam.

Alec blinked, still uncertain of what was happening around him. He could make out light and dark. Movement and stillness. His ears turned everything into strained echo. He felt his eyes water as he tried harder to focus.

“Alec!”

Someone was whispering in frustration, yanking one of his arms free of the confining mold he had been placed in, another hand under his neck, trying to pull his head forward.

“Can you hear me? Wake up!”

There was the sound of movement, of another person nearby. Hands were on his skin, checking his pulse, at his neck and his wrist. Alec felt his dulled forgotten anger simmer back to the surface. His unbound limbs met the icy cold air of the room, maybe as cold as the snow covered peaks that Alec had imagined may lay just outside. His freed hands traveled over himself, feeling nothing but his bare chest and some fabric at his waist that ended at his thigh. It wasn’t much to withstand the elements. But that was okay. After all, he had been built to withstand a lot of things.

“A-Alec?”

Organic scents, maybe something like human scents. With all defenses stripped down and nothing defined, he relied on the most base and primal of instincts. Threat, like salt in sea air, was unmistakable. He did not need eyes to know it. Two different bodies, two scents. One like his, the other of entirely different make. He need not be concerned with that one. It was the ones like his he had to fear. But there was something like kin in the timbre of the voice, an echo he seemed to recognize. Soft long hair fell down and hid Alec’s face, blocking the light and bringing home the scent of the person. Strong. Female. He groaned when the quiet surge of the hormone surfaced again. He couldn’t push it back down and away. He was so tired. But he wasn’t finished.

If he had to fight one more time he would make sure he made it count.

He felt himself smile a little bit when his fist made contact with flesh, the sudden gasp, and the scent of her reeling away. He pulled himself upwards, feeling connections attached to him snap, feeling needles strapped into his flesh tear, he still couldn’t see but he could hear them. Smell them. The floor was suddenly cold under his face, his legs useless underneath him. They might have done something to his spine to temporarily disable his nervous system. For what? Memory clouded his thoughts. They were sending him somewhere. They were selling him to someone. For study. For experimentation. Maybe he was already there.

Alec could hear himself trying to speak. He could hear the sounds that were trying to form the words he was screaming in his head. No. No. No.

He swung out again when they came too near, catching her ankle and flooring her hard. He wasn’t going anywhere, they’d have to kill him, they’d have no choice. They’d have to slice him down into paper thin sheets and package him that way before they could do one more god damn thing—

“A-Alec! It’s going to be okay!”

He tried to roll onto his side and found he couldn’t. The voice and scents were confusing him now. They were everywhere, moving and talking.

“I’m sorry Alec.” A man’s voice said softly.

The burn of another needle in his arm and he felt what was left of his fight rapidly start to fade. The red light he could see through the bleary gauze of his vision quickly became less distinct.

“We have got to get out of here Max, now!”

The alarm was still sounding, steady and low, bringing the other voices closer, the sounds of confusion and uncertainty mixed up with the smell of the left over fires. His anger flared again as he felt hands lift him. The scent carrying threat would not have control again. He wanted silence. Stop the panic in his blood, stop the noise—

Alec froze.

There was another sound that made him still his own breath.

He heard other footsteps. Far off down some empty corridor but coming closer. He twisted in the grip he was in, listening intently to a slow tread he knew. A steady fall that he had memorized. He felt the floor under his back again. His head rolled limply to the side, his muscles going completely slack, his motor control gone. The people near him were too loud, their talking, rushed voices overlapping with his breathing, the sound of his lungs filling and exhaling in a staggered rhythm.

The foot fall grew louder and louder.

Clothing was being slid over his head and onto his arms. Up over his numb legs. There was a distant sensation of warmth spreading over his skin that he hadn’t realized was almost numb with cold. The firm footsteps finally stopped. If Alec could turn his head he would see him.

Standing right there in the doorway. Everything stopped as the people handling him finally noticed they were no longer alone.

“452.” Agent Ames White said.

Alec could feel the air all around him change. The scent of the woman near by him suddenly went white hot, her aggression roiling off of her like a fire he was too close to. The other person that still hovering over him, the male, smelled like anger and dully keen with fear as the alarm still sounded on and off and on and off…

But Ames, he smelled the way he always did.

Alec tried to watch the swing of the red emergency strobe overhead but it was getting darker and darker. The blur of it smearing into one insubstantial wash of light. There was violence around him. He could hear the dull crashes, the sounds of muted pain and the movement of bodies in full motion. Flesh struck flesh. Bone against bone. The light above had crystallized into every individual particle it emitted. Staring up at it, he thought it was almost beautiful. It dimmed even further until only the heart of the filament itself shone through the tunnel of his faltering vision. Something shattered nearby. He could feel the fall of glass across his face, gentle like rain.

Soon he knew that he would see, hear and feel nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the doors opened and closed behind them, Logan felt as if he had just finished climbing a mountain.

Everything was dark as he had left it, his computer station buzzing and flickering to life as he stepped into its vicinity. The city was glittering dully outside the windows in a steady night of rainfall. The familiar feel of home was so welcome all he wanted to do was collapse in his biggest and softest chair and not move for a few hours. But he had a few things to do first.

Max had helped Alec in and laid him unceremoniously out on the floor beside the front door. She was looking down at him, still covered in canvas snow pants from the mountains, the heavy down jacket with hood they had managed for him almost completely obscuring his face. It was warm down here in the city. The rain chilly but nothing close to what they had felt up north. But Alec was pale and shivering, the heavy coat bundled up around him the only thing keeping him relatively calm.

That and the sedatives.

Logan hadn't wanted to give him anything else on top of who knew what had been already administered. However, they had a long trip with a lot of checkpoints and they had no idea what state Alec was in. The drugs Logan had given him were mild. Mild enough that he sometimes attempted to talk or fight them. Both were garbled and confused. Thankfully for the most of it he'd slept. Laid out in the back seat, cocooned in the winter jacket with the large hood that hid him away from the light and the forest that passed by them mile by mile in the car windows.

Logan keyed into his terminal and smiled when he almost immediately received a reply.

"There are a few things I need you to pick up at the hospital Max, I think we can—“

"I'm not leaving this apartment." Max said bluntly, her hands working on the loose hood of Alec's coat.

Logan looked at her carefully and then slowly nodded. "Okay, it's fine, we'll just get--"

"I'll call Cindy." Max said suddenly.

Logan's small smile faded as he looked down at the transgenic that lay shuddering on the floor.

"First things first."

Max nodded and hauled Alec up to his feet. There had only been so much they could do in their tense drive down out of the mountains and back over the border. They had kept him stable, they had kept him warm and almost mercifully comatose. There had been no time to stop and take stock of damage done. No time to gather their own thoughts and rest themselves.

Logan closed his eyes for a moment and imagined what the promise of sleep would feel like in the not so distant future. They just needed to put things in order first. They’d been through too much to mess this all up now. They had to first take care of Alec and make sure they could keep him here safely. Logan wasn’t going to go through what happened last time again. Alec wasn't leaving this apartment unless he stepped over Logan's very own dead body.

"You try getting some fluids in him. I'm going to try to find out what kind of cocktail they might have prepped him with for transport." Logan settled down in front of his computer. The key board under his hands felt like coming home a second time. “It’d also be nice to know if anyone traced us down here…”

Max sat Alec heavily into a large leather chair and watched him slump limply to the side before she moved to Logan's kitchen.

“And Max?"

She paused, her hand on the refrigerator door.

"Use the bottled water." Logan said over his shoulder. “Just in case.”

He hadn't meant it to sound like the half joke it came out as. The grim look she returned him was nothing compared to what he thought she might say instead. The fridge door slammed with a noisy rattle of glass jars and bottles that lined its doors.

A window popped up on his monitor. It was old Intel but Logan thought that these men might not vary too much on their procedures on how they handled the shipment of transgenics to buyers. However, what he was most interested in was not the method but what was done medically beforehand. Especially because it meant just how long it would be before Ames White or his men sounded another alarm. In fact, if they were beyond lucky, the agent was still down deep under that concrete structure unconscious and dreaming right where they left him. Tightly under a lid and in Alec’s place.

It was amazing really how close the agent’s bio readings were to a transgenic’s. If no one opened the thing up they wouldn’t even know the difference until it was much too late. If it wasn’t too late already.

Logan had to admit, after Max had gone head to head with White, those readings had become fairly faint. It was the only reason Logan could convince her to flee while they still could. Her efforts to off the man had been severe and brutal but the agent had withstood her like he was made from something even as strong as she was. Max’s bruised face and battered body was all the proof he needed of that fact.

A small beep brought him back to the task at hand.

A neat compilation of chemicals began to stream down in a list on the monitor. The particularly volatile and noxious came up tagged in a bright red of warning. Logan frowned. If they were going to weather Alec’s reemergence into consciousness right here in these four walls, he wanted to know for damn sure just exactly they were in for. From what he could understand of the disquieting list, it wasn’t going to be very pleasant.

A soft broken noise distracted him. Raw and unused, the wounded transgenic tried twice before his throat would make the words he was attempting to form.

“…wh-where…”

Logan turned to see Max holding the bottled water up to Alec’s mouth. He was speaking again. That meant the sedatives were now sliding down off their peak. Logan felt his jaw clench. That wasn’t any good. Fortunately, he had another transgenic here that was ready to handle it. He hoped. Alec’s hand came fast and from nowhere, whipping the bottle away and catching Max across her face. Max stayed his strong fist, and stared back evenly at him. Logan could see him staring at her in confusion. All of his movements uncertain, his muscles twitching, his hands in the thick gloves trembling.

“Where am- where am I?”

She caught the other hand that came at her, quickly and efficiently subduing him. He stared at her again but then slowly blinked, his eyes turning wet and bright as he searched her face.

“M-Max?”

“You’re home Alec.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Thank god you're here."

Logan didn’t know how else to say it. The welcome sight of Cindy standing in his doorway made him feel like the last week may have not even happened. She looked back up at him curiously, her arms filled with the task he had sent her on and her eyes filled with questions he knew he’d have to soon answer.

"Think I got it all." She said, handing him the supplies he'd requested from his contact. Apparently Cindy had looked through it all herself. "Four point restraints? Kinky." She gave a wry smile.

"Are they padded?" Logan asked seriously as he dug through the bag himself.

"Uh...yeah? Why, izzit yer anniversary or something?"

"Cute." Logan said, letting her in. "This way."

Cindy didn’t waste any time.

“So where the hell’ve you guys been anyway?”

"M-Max and I were just having a little bit of trouble…" Logan began heading back across the living room. “We’ve been up in Canada...for a few days.”

“Trouble?" Cindy frowned. "Trouble you couldn't work out with a l'il wine and dine?"

"No, no, nothing like that." Logan sighed, feeling more tired than he already was. "This has nothing to do with Max. Or me. It's about--"

"Ames White."

Max was there suddenly, stopping them short in the hallway. Her hair was in her face and she was flushed and breathless. She smiled. Or at least she tried.

"Cindy. Hi."

Cindy looked at her carefully. "And who is Ames White?"

"Kinda hard to explain." Max chewed her lip.

"Wait." Cindy held up a hand. “Try starting from the part that makes sense, like the beginning? And what happened to your face?”"

Max opened her mouth to reply when a sudden explosion of splintering wood forced them all to jump. A fist protruded from the bathroom door, knuckles raw and bleeding. Logan sighed and covered his face with his hand.

"Ohhhh Lord." Cindy blinked in startled confusion. "Uh....what is _that?_ ”

“Alec." Max said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logan knew what Cindy would see.

Somehow Max had managed to get him to the bathroom. Alec's limbs had not stopped trembling and he'd been overly tense, eyes darting everywhere as he took in his surroundings. In the living room seated on the leather chair, he'd been relatively sedate. In the hallway, he'd been sluggish. But when Max tried taking him into the bathroom for a wash, all hell had broken loose.

Alec’s entire demeanor had shifted. It was as if the warm dry wood floor changed to cold, sterile tile. The walls became stark white and mirrored. Logan had actually seen Alec's eyes harden on the neatly arranged shelves of prescribed medication. He had turned on Max in a blind panic when Logan had started to fill the bathtub. They could not understand why the suggestion of immersion had made him frantic. It was after that that all of Alec's tentative cooperation had evaporated.

Logan watched Max wearily approach the bathroom door.

“Alec?” She knocked firmly as she turned the knob. “We’re coming in!”

Logan watched Cindy’s gaze linger on the cracked mirror, a lattice network of breakage running down its center. Faint reddish smears of blood stood out on the walls where Alec had punched them. Pills were scattered in a colorful array all over the floor. Alec was standing against the sink, fists raised and tensed. He was breathing too hard and fast, chest hitching. He looked worn, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

"Alec. Look who's here?" Max said, moving aside a little to give him a better view.

Logan could see Cindy recoil slightly.

"What's up with him?" She hissed.

"He's kinda outta it right now."

Cindy had a strange look on her face that made her look brave. Cautiously, she stepped past Max. Her smile was forced.

"Hey?" She began hesitantly. Alec stared, seeming to tolerate her. She moved a little closer. "Uh, l-long time no--"

Alec charged. The motion so quick and so lethal that Logan had to grab Cindy and throw her out into the hall as Max intercepted him.

"Woah, easy there." Max said, her grip around his waist as he lunged again, heaving and frantic. "This ain't exactly...a one man job!" She grunted.

“…or two woman.” Cindy blew out her breath, feeling the back of her head where it had knocked against the wall.

"Was thinkin--" Max groaned as she had to force Alec down to the floor on his knees. "--maybe I could--" A boot was planted firmly down on his shoulder blades and pressed hard. "—sit on him while you scrub?"

Cindy looked down at Alec, struggling and panting below Max. She lifted a doubtful eyebrow.

"You crazy, boo."

Max motioned to Logan. With a resigned sigh, he tossed her the pair of handcuffs that Cindy had picked up along with an assortment of other things from his contact at the hospital.

“NO!" Alec shouted and surged upwards. Max slammed her boot down on his back, straddling him and yanking one arm behind his back. "S-STOP! IT'S NOT ME!!!"

"Shhhhh!" Max did her best soothing tone, forcing his wrists into the cuffs and snapping them shut. Alec would not be calmed, his shoulders heaving with renewed struggles. “Alec, you're ok, you're safe now--"

"I-I didn't tell them where you are Max!" He moaned. "I didn't tell them anything, I didn't tell them--" He pressed his face wretchedly against the cold floor tile.

"I know. It's ok, everything’s fine." Max murmured to him as she reached over to twist on the shower. "Come on Alec? Please? We'll getcha cleaned up."

Logan resisted getting any closer to pat him on the shoulder and instead looked to Cindy.

Max was looking at her too. “We could really use your help?”

"You askin’ way too much of Original Cindy, girl." Cindy held up her hands. “What am I supposed to do?”

"I don’t know?" Max said, her frayed edges reaching her voice. "I just—I didn’t know who else to call, I just—“

“Ok, Ok, just take a deep breath.” Cindy said. “I mean, it’s still just _Alec_ in there, right?”

Cindy approached Alec apprehensively from the threshold. Slowly, she knelt carefully down next to his trembling shoulder. She glanced at the shower then back at Alec. The transgenic flinched when her fingers gently and briefly touched his neck.

"Damn, his heart's going crazy. What they do to him?"

"It's those drugs they prepped him with for transport.” There was rage behind Max's forced calm. "And all that other shit they've been pumping into him, god, I just..." She slumped down the tile wall and hid her face in arms.

"Alec?" Cindy covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh honey, you that smell?"

"What smell?" Logan asked.

"He smells like smoke and um, and..." Her mouth trembled a little.

Logan knew. He had gotten so used to it that he hadn't even noticed. The many wounds that covered Alec's body and the unmistakable scent of blood. It was as if his instinct to be alarmed at the heavy metallic scent had been dulled or masked. All Cindy could smell was Alec. The smoke, the blood, the sweat. She did not smell the stuff coursing through his system, could not detect the deep burnt sugar scent of his altered chemistry. She, like all other non-transgenics, was immune.

Logan began to see the full logic of Max’s insistence on Cindy’s presence.

"Aw, baby..." Cindy ran her fingers through Alec's damp hair, the hiss and steam of the shower swirling behind her. "....you a mess."

She straightened and pushed her hair out of her face.

"Alright, let's do this." Cindy stood up. "Come on sweet thing, pick 'im up! I'll make sure he's all washed off ok? Y-You just sit right there and get my back if he goes all assassin on me."

Logan could feel Max's relief as she carefully heaved Alec off the ground, letting him lean against her. His shakes were back. Taking one look at the water, Cindy shrugged, rolled up her sleeves and lost her shoes.

“Ok honey, in we go. It’s all right, I’m going right in there with you see?”

Alec hung back in Max’s grip. He was watching the water and shaking his head.

“It’s nice and hot, look…” Cindy reached out and touched his arms with her wet hands. “Almost too hot, see? It'll feel real good?”

He didn’t resist when Max nudged him forward again.

“That's it, just sit down right here.” Cindy looked sideways at Max who had turned away, dragging her forearm across her eyes. “We can um take off your clothes ... I guess...?”

Cindy carefully peeled the quickly soaked T-shirt off of Alec, pulling it sopping wet over his head and leaving it wadded at his wrists. Logan shared her shock at the sight of his flesh underneath. Logan swallowed nervously as he saw the unhealed bruises and wounds on the transgenic's body. His skin color was an unnatural shade of white that was off even for some of the Manticore exotics. Cindy ran her hand delicately over the strange clear plastic that was fastened over freshly sutured wounds. Gunshot wounds.

“Should I, um—“

“It’s ok,” Max murmured “That’s military grade bio plastic. Waterproof.”

Cindy looked around and found some shampoo that she squirted into her palm. “They sure had a time with you Alec honey.”

Alec let her move the soap through his hair. “I--I didn't tell them where you were.”

Shrugging, Cindy just nodded. “That’s good, you did good.”

Cindy’s brisk hands moved down under his arms and down his back. Alec’s body tensed, his trapped hands making fists behind his back. His voice was lower, huskier, filled with restraint.

“D-Dont-dont touch me…”

Cindy took her hands away and looked up uncertainly at Logan.

“It’s a hormone.” Logan cleared his throat. “There's still enough of it in him to-- Look, we don't know long it will take to get out of his system, maybe a week? Maybe more…”

Logan stopped talking as Cindy soaped carefully around Alec’s bruises. He tried not to watch Max fold a little bit more into herself and bring her hands to tightly hold on her head.

“It’s almost over Alec,” Cindy said as she worked, speaking in a low and droning kind of voice. “Try to think about something else, something nice.”

Alec shuddered, his shoulders shaking with the quiet sobs he somehow decided he couldn’t keep in anymore.

“Something a little better than that. Hey? What about the time you beat out that pool tournament at Crash?” Cindy smiled a little. “You beat every one of em, remember that?”

Alec didn’t answer her.

Max drew up her knees to her chest and watched them with an exhausted caution.

Logan wished he could take Max’s place on the floor. Take the vigil from her and let her sit one moment of this out. He quietly shut the door behind him, the need to give Alec some semblance of privacy suddenly important to him. Rubbing his eyes under his glasses, he walked slowly out into his apartment. Logan turned when he heard his computer.

It had brought back a return on his inquiry. Along side the medical information he had been extremely interested in military movement everywhere and anywhere on the northwest coast of the continent. With a small smile of disbelief he sat down heavily in his chair. There was nothing going on. Nothing but the same routine activities he had almost memorized in his daily inventory of the active government networks in his part of the country. Chances were they hadn’t been tracked outside of the northern sector check points.

Chances were that they had actually gotten away with it.

Sitting back, he turned his chair so he could watch the rain stream down his windows. He listened to Cindy’s far off voice, drifting in a steady litany of comfort down the hall. The sound was muffled, but her calm tone carried.

Logan hoped that some of got to Alec.

And if there was any left, he hoped that maybe some would reach Max too.

 

to be completed, Heat: Epilogue... And then the sequel: Traces


	8. Chapter 8

Hot water, musky lather of soap, soft words and Alec seemed almost to breathe like himself again.

Exhausted and glassy-eyed, he had settled down into an eerie calm. Even beneath the heady aroma of the shampoo, the heavy scent of his tampered blood wafted from him. Promising violence. Reminding Logan that nothing had changed except for the transgenic's reluctant compliance. Alec seemed as wary of their movements as they were of his. But that didn’t make Logan any less nervous.

They'd dried him off and lent him some clothes that had been sterilized. New sweatpants from the five and dime out of the wrapper, a T-shirt given to Logan that had never been worn. Even laundered clothing would have traces of his own chemistry. For now, Logan reasoned, the less possible irritants the better.

Following the extended trauma of the bathroom, Max had lead him to the bed they had set up and quietly placed the restraints on him. One on either of his wrists and one on either of his ankles. Alec had watched her but he hadn’t fought it, moving only when she was done, testing his mobility and finding that he didn’t have much from the solid wrought iron bed frame. Alec was subdued. Weary and watchful but some how utterly resigned. The blankets up to his waist made it look as if it was comfortable and normal. They had arranged it so he was closest to the bed’s right side for easy access. They had given him enough pillows so that he was almost sitting up. After that it was time for Dr. Beverley Shankar to take up where they left off.

The doctor had spent an hour alone in Logan’s bedroom with Alec. The door was kept closed upon her request. The apartment was strangely quiet as they all sat in the living room and waited. When the door finally opened, it was only Logan who stood to join her in the room. One look at Max showed him that she’d rather have the cliff note version that Logan could provide for her afterwards. Cindy simply nodded her head in some show of encouragement, her hand closing over Max’s in their own shared resolve.

The room smelled… good.

He had been avoiding rooms Alec had been shut up in. Even with the ventilation, the presence of his pheromones built up and lingered in any one place he stayed in for any given length of time. Logan hoped the doctor didn’t notice him holding his hand idly over his mouth and nose. He was gestured away from the bed as he entered, closest to the wall.

"Can he hear us?" Logan pointed out in case the doctor demanded discretion. Alec's eyes were vacant, his chest rising and falling softly.

"I’m not sure." The doc snapped her fingers in front of the transgenic’s face and got no reaction at all. "He seems to be in an almost catatonic state."

Logan felt his eyebrows rise.

“Well?”

The doctor smiled tiredly, but there was no humor it. It reminded Logan of his mechanic every time he pulled in with the car after it’d had a particularly exciting ride off the civilized side of the city grid.

“Where would you like me to start?” She asked.

Logan found himself smiling back, the make of it formed out of exhaustion. To his relief she started without him actually trying to discern what part of Alec’s battered body they should discuss first.

“I won't have anything conclusive until I get the blood work back. The rest, as you saw, may be inferred. I'll start with the light suff." She held up her memo. "There are definite signs of malnourishment and the onset of…” Her gaze flickered up at Logan and then away. “…of starvation. Massive dehydration, and all the subsequent vitamin deficiencies which were accelerated due to his metabolism…”

Logan tried to listen as if it was just like any other kind of information and not a detailed list of how and exactly this transgenic was tortured. The vague picture of Alec’s time in captivity started to solidify in disturbing focus.

“The contusions are well, plentiful, but not advanced. They should clear up on their own in time.” She paused. “The gun shot wounds however…”

Dr. Shankar rubbed at the back of her neck as she took a seat next to the patient. Alec flinched mildly when the blanket was pulled back, his shirt lifted to reveal the gauze taped perfectly in place. The bio plastic had been removed by the doctor, most likely out of confusion as to what it was rather than its ability to properly bandage a wound. The white gauze it had been replaced with was carefully peeled back.

“It's like science fiction. If you hadn’t told me these were a few days old, I would have guessed more than a week. Maybe more.”

Logan watched her lightly touch the small entrance wound with a latex gloved hand. Her voice became lower, her gaze going to Alec who was watching them but showing no acknowledgement whatsoever of what they were saying.

"So what's the outlook, doc?"

"To be honest? Variable. Until I get a better idea of what his system's been through these past weeks, I can only speculate based on my initial findings. Fortunately, they are relatively positive. Alec's level of regeneration is maintaining his functions better than I could have ever expected..."

Logan nodded but sensed a growing timber to her voice, a shift in tone that said there was something else on that list she had carefully complied. Something much worse than what she had revealed so far.

He saw her gaze flicker to Alec's stoic face before she continued.

"I have to inform you, there are some factors I did not anticipate Logan.”

“The blood analysis?” Logan felt his brow furrow. “I thought that the lab work would take at least a day—“

“No.”

To Logan’s surprise she gently clasped Alec’s trapped hand for a moment while she looked back at him. Alec’s reaction was no reaction at all. He simply stared at her, seeming to wait for what she would do next.

“This man has been badly beaten. A few ribs that reset themselves, some hairline fractures that are doing the same in his wrists…”

Logan sighed. The array of x-rays the doctor had produced with a hand held device no larger than a phone and it had revealed some trauma none of them had been able to see.

The transgenic's organs were all battered as if he’d been rolled over by a truck. The condition would have been more than life threatening if the person in question hadn’t seemed to have been half way to healing all on his own anyway.

"There are contusions." She continued gently. "Consistent with repeated trauma."

Logan swallowed.

“His throat and his arms... excessive bruising, indicative of enforced handling... around his legs, his thighs and lower abdomen...”

Uncomfortable with the woman’s sudden inability to discuss Alec’s condition out loud, Logan attempted to help. Even a doctor who knew what a transgenic could manage to live through didn’t always get the pleasure of seeing it in full breathing color everyday.

“We think he got most of them trying to defend himself.” Logan said in the calmest voice he could manage. “The ones on his hands and forearms, we think they’re conducive with measures of self defense—“

“Logan, if he didn’t heal so fast I might have been able to prove it, but I think...” She was shaking her head. “I think someone in that facility tried to... assault him."

There was much more meaning behind the obvious observation of the marks Logan could plainly see on Alec's flesh. Logan felt his skin chill, her words stopping the next long ramble of meaningless comforting words that were ready on his tongue. He thought of that night, being knocked out of his chair by Alec. Logan thought of how the pheromone affected any other transgenic that got near the X5. He thought about what that would mean if someone had had control over Alec, desperate and in pain, unable to protect himself let alone--

Alec unexpectedly spoke. Low and strained, his voice rasping in his throat.

“I won’t tell them.”

His eyes were locked on Shankar but Logan knew he wasn’t addressing the doctor.

“I-I won't tell them where you are.”

Logan and the doctor both stared at him uncomfortably.

“I’ll need a few more things.” She said quietly.

“S-Sure.” Logan fumbled to get his glasses back into place. “Name it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Make sure to turn him onto his side at least twice a day.” The doctor said. “I mean, if he doesn’t start moving himself.”

Logan looked back at the man that lay in his bed and nodded.

“All his fluids are coming in from the IV, you should be able to measure it on the way out almost like clockwork. “ She rubbed at her chin. “Let me know if his fluid output starts to change in any way, I’m a little worried about his kidneys.”

Logan nodded, wondering how much of this his mind would be able to hang onto after she’d left.

“Keep on that drip, if you run out of what I’ve left you, just give me a call.”

The doctor checked the machine that regulated the fluids that were being administered down through a network of tubes. Some of it provided Alec with some kind of nourishment until they could figure out some way to get him to eat. A catheter eliminated the issue of releasing him repeatedly for the bathroom.

“T-thank you Dr. Shankar.” Logan repeated.

He wasn’t sure of what else to say. All he could feel was completely thankful that this woman had come all this way without even one question. It had taken the better part of the day to acquire all the things she said Alec would need, but with Max and Cindy ready to do just about anything, they had found everything Dr. Shankar asked for along with a few things she hadn’t.

Logan wasn’t nervous being left alone with Alec this time. He had faith in the hospital grade restraints. He had even more faith in the several hundred pound metal bed frame he’d bought himself last Christmas.

“There’s a wheeze in his lungs I’d like to keep an eye on too…” The doctor paused. “I’d like to check in again tomorrow. If-- If you don’t mind?”

Logan blinked, startled that the doctor was actually asking his permission to return.

“Yes, yes of course.”

Dr. Shankar sighed, her gaze falling back on the quiet transgenic that lay unspeaking on the bed before them. Alec hadn’t said one word to any of them as the doctor had checked him thoroughly. He didn’t protest when the needles were slid into his veins and taped up neatly for the IVs. He didn’t even struggle when more painful procedures were required below the waist.

“H-He’s remarkable you know.” She mumbled mostly to herself. “I think his system will be able to withstand the brunt of the withdrawal all on its own.”

Logan shifted his weight and uncrossed his arms.

“Is that a good idea? He’s been put on so many things, we don’t even know—"

“That’s just it.” Shankar shrugged. “I can’t treat something if I have no idea what the hell it is. The safest bet is to monitor his vitals, sedate him as best we can and just let it run its course.”

Logan watched her sit by Alec one more time and press a finger against his neck. Alec’s gaze flickered sideways towards her, a slow simmering menace in the look that made Logan glad that Alec couldn’t act on it even if he had had the strength to.

“If he gives any indication that he’ll eat, by all means, let him. His caloric intake requirement is well, a lot higher than ours….” The doctor’s voice trailed off as she looked back down at the patient. “…remarkable.”

Beverly Shankar slowly took up her jacket that was laying on a nearby chair and gave Logan a pat on the shoulder as she left.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Logan stood there still for a time after the doctor left.

“Alec?”

Alec’s skin was glazed with a sheen of sweat. The shirt they’d given him was already soaked in a damp V down his chest. He stared back up at Logan, his lips parted with labored breath, his hands moving in and out of fists from where they lay in the padded cuffs.

“D-Do you know where you are Alec?” Logan asked softly.

He hadn’t mentioned it to the doctor, or even to Max for that matter, but ever since they had found Alec, Logan had been trying not to get too close. He could smell him again, the waft and thick swirl of it blended in the room’s stale air. He stepped backwards, hoping to somehow step out of range of it, like it was some kind of cloud. Logan's jaw tightened as he thought of how easily someone could had taken advantage of Alec in this state. Handled and used him like they had foolishly mistreated his chemistry.

Logan decided in that moment that he wouldn’t tell Max that part of the doctor’s discoveries. That was something Alec could tell or keep to himself as he saw fit. It seemed criminal that even Logan knew. With a deep breath, he suddenly wondered what Alec actually would remember of what had happened to him. Only time would reveal that.

Logan cleared his throat.

“Do you know that you’re back in Seattle?”

Alec’s pained breathing was all the response he got. The vial the doctor had injected into his IV was supposed to have sent him into a restful sleep but apparently the transgenic’s body had other plans.

Logan turned off the light anyway, leaving the corner lamp on. It was dim and yellow but it kept the room from total darkness.

“Try to get some sleep.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec stared at the ceiling.

Someone had left on a television with the intent that the sound would make him more comfortable. It was doing the opposite. The insidious program it had cycled to between commercials was supposed to be funny. He remembered watching it before. A long time ago in his own apartment late at night. He had thought it was funny then. Not exactly how other people might have found it funny he supposed, but it had made him laugh. He thought how the actors talked and moved was strange. It surprised him every time a burst of recorded laughter blared over their words when they did or said something manufactured to make him smile.

He didn’t think the effort itself was meant to be the entertainment but he always laughed when they told him to. He always smiled when the music indicated he should. But not now. Now the roar of the contrived and computer manipulated mirth frayed on his edges. Every digitally enhanced chuckle and happy wheeze made him breathe faster, grip his hands on his tethers tighter. The sweat that ran down his temples, and beaded on his upper lip made him shiver violently one moment and then attempt to kick his stifling blankets away the next. The bed he was in was permeated with the presence of another person.

A man he knew. Logan Cale.

The smell of a place where one slept was inundated with every scent that person owned. The warm smell of deep delta sleep. It was that subterranean level between sleep stages three and four that were the least like the human mind was when awake. It was hardest to wake a person when they were all the way down there. Sometimes you couldn’t wake them up at all. Every movement he made, no matter how slight, maddened him with the scent of another human being that he couldn’t touch. The clothes they wore, the pillows they laid their heads on and the mattress that eventually bore the groove of their body. It was one of the most intimate belongings that a person could expose to someone else. Someone like Alec anyway.

When Logan walked in, it was almost as if the man himself was just a shadow of scents compared to what Alec lay in and was surrounded by. The pillows were filled with him. It wouldn’t matter how many times they washed any of it, it was as if the man had some continuous gentle hold on all of his senses.

Logan smiled at him uncertainly from behind Max.

“Aren’t you hungry Alec?”

No. He was the opposite of hungry, he felt like he could burn forever on the air he took in alone. He was the perfect machine needing and wasting nothing. Didn’t they know that? They had fixed him up there in those mountains. Ames had altered him once again so he wouldn’t need anything but oxygen. Sometimes not even that was necessary. Didn’t Max know he had been unfettered from everything? Did she realize that they could set him free now? The only reason she wouldn’t was because she had made a deal herself.

Alec made a small sound in the back of his throat as she tried to feed him whatever poison lay in her offering.

A spoon was pressed up against his lips.

“Just one bite.” Max sighed. “Come on? I didn’t cook it if that makes you feel any better.”

Alec could smell the aroma of the chicken broth from the bowl even over the riot and cascade of her red scent. It did smell good. Salty and rich. With chopped up carrots, celery and potatoes softened in the soup. Lumps of peppered flour dough steamed into dumplings floated among the mix. He forgot what they called a food like that. He found he had been forgetting a lot of things when he had never forgotten a thing in his life.

“Just one small bite?” She pleaded softly. “Y-You’ve gotten so skinny Alec.”

In her persistence the hot fluid pushed against his lower lip and he licked at it involuntarily. Like blood from a wound. It was better than it smelled and he felt his stomach clench. It was salty like blood but it had a substance to it, proteins and fats, starches and carbohydrates.

Alec blinked when he realized he hadn’t in a very long while. His eyes burned and itched. He wanted to rub at his eyes but his hands wouldn’t reach his face.

“Let me go.”

Max sat back with the bowl in her lap. Her jaw worked, her lips pressed together.

“I can’t do that—"

Alec brought up his knee as hard as he was able, striking the bowl out from her hands and unbalancing her causal seat by his side. The restraint kept his knee from going any further, but the shatter of the porcelain bowl on the floor made him smile. He looked up to see Max backing up away from him. She was covered in scalding soup.

Max had moved before his knee could really get her in the leg. Some soft tissue damage avoided. A black and blue she wouldn’t even have for 48 hours.

“I-I can’t do that Alec.” She repeated.

Alec shuddered in his binds, trying to rip them right off the metal bars that they were lashed firmly to.

“ _Let me go._ " He twisted frantically until he was on his stomach. Bringing up his knees as far as they could go, he used crisscrossed wrists to just brace himself and just... pull.

“Alec- stop it!”

They weren’t going to ship him anywhere. They weren’t going to slice him up into well fed pieces for some agency that set itself up like some kind of a spider. A pitfall, a trap down in the dark waiting for something to walk on by.

“P-Please Max?” He heard himself beg. “I’ll go far away, they’ll never find me…”

They were going to bind him up in silk and deliver him to it. They were going to feed it with his living body. He was never going to die that way, they’d have to shoot him, they’d have to hold him down into one of those deli meat slicers first—

“ _Alec!_

The metal bed frame groaned with his efforts. So did the bones in his arms and wrists.

“Alec! S-Stop! Stop it!”

Alec’s hands were wrenched free of the metal, his wrists suddenly limp and in a dull agony. When he tried to move his fingers he found they wouldn’t obey his commands. He wondered briefly if he had broken them. Max’s body was smothering him with its strength and her frantic smell. He struggled violently one more time but he whimpered at the feel of the buckled binds as they held fast. All he wanted to do was sit up. All he wanted to do was walk to the other side of the room. All he wanted to do was go and find out how far the drop was outside that window. All he wanted was to walk out of here…

“Max?” He searched her face until he found her eyes. “It's okay, Max. T-they wont kill me yet. They’ll use me first Max, cut me apart. They'll keep cutting and cutting until there is just enough of me left to stay alive—“

“Alec, no—“

“ _Let me go?_ ” Alec moaned. “ _Why won’t you let me go!_ ”

His frustration peaked and broke.

He started screaming.

Footsteps crowded into the space that had been made into his new prison.

“ _Help me!_ ” Max ordered.

Alec knew what was coming next, he knew what would happen every time he fought too hard. Every time he came close to maybe one more inch of freedom. He heard himself choke back his sobs when he was turned and shoved down onto his back, people were speaking everywhere, confusing him with all the sounds and white gray fierce smells of their fear, worry, fear, anxiety, frustration, fear…

A needle broke his sweat slick skin, jarred painfully when he jerked his arm causing the needle to snap in his flesh. He yelled out again, weaker already with what they’d managed to inject into his vein. Alec felt the dull sensation settle rapidly over his thrashing limbs, his heart finally the only thing still struggling, beating hard and steady in his chest.

When he faded away he hoped that this time that he’d never come back.

That notion made him smile.

He heard himself laughing, heard and felt people touching him, blood dripping like sweat down to his wrist. He inhaled and laughed again, wanting to be able to form the words he wanted to say. To tell them to do their worst. Let them try anything they wanted. No matter what they did, he’d be back.

He always came back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He woke up every now and then.

Drifting in and out as slowly as waves that lapped a shore with the incoming tide. Sometimes he woke to someone changing the dressing on his side. Once it was the steady beep of the machine at his bedside that made him open his eyes. He watched an empty bag be unhooked and a new full one replace it before he was gone again. Someone was reading to him softly. An article in a magazine about the rise in ocean levels was now slowly dooming the global climate. The pages flipped gently one by one, each word spoken one after another and another...

He opened his eyes again at the dawn streaming through at a flat angle into his face. Squinting into the sun, he turned his head away for some relief. Before he vanished, he felt plaster casts had been put on his wrists.

He didn’t remember that being done.

Next he came to with a hand under his neck, and being told to swallow slowly. Alec began coughing when he didn’t, choking on the food that went down the wrong way. His body was not awake enough to properly do what it was meant to do automatically.

Alec woke alone sometimes, trembling and sweating so badly he thought his heart might burst right out of his chest. He longed for a familiar voice then, anyone to send him back into the blackness where he felt and heard nothing at all. Some peaceful place several feet below himself where he was a rest from his mind’s chaos and his body’s agony. Although, even without the bite of the needle, it all eventually faded away whether he willed it to or not.

But this time when he opened his eyes, something had seemed altered. Looking around the same four walls of the room, he could detect that things were not as they had been before.

In fact, everything had completely changed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confused, Alec tried to sit up as far as his binds would allow him.

He wasn’t exactly sure what had changed right away. He listened. All he could hear was the gentle thud of rain beating softly against the window. The whisper of voices a room away. Unconcerned. Heavy with sleep. Alec turned his head back towards the window. Somewhere, far below, was the ragged sharp sound of traffic. The pounding in his head was gone. All that was left was a dull ache left over right behind his eyes. Shifting, he longed to rub at it with one of his bound hands but he couldn’t reach. His body still trembled slightly but he wasn’t wracked with the shakes that shifted into mild convulsions every time he dared tried to move.

Drawing up his knees closer to himself, he saw that the room seemed brighter even though the lights were off. Everything was in focus. Crisper and neater. The television was mercifully off. The screen was black, as dark as the windows and the night outside. Blinking around in the dim light of the room, he worked his mouth open and shut.

“Are you thirsty?”

Alec focused his sluggish pupils in the semi-dark and spotted Logan seated in the corner. He hadn’t heard or sensed him sitting there. Alec suddenly realized he hadn’t awoken to the onslaught of scents that he knew surrounded him in every way. He let out a small sigh of confounded relief.

But he couldn’t quite remember why he was in Logan’s apartment. Let alone his bed. Something had happened. Something pretty bad. Alec frowned, his hands tugging absently at the tethers. He knew he was supposed to know. Alec clenched his jaw, thoughts and actions, places and noises, flickering on and off in his mind like a faulty light bulb. The sensation was mildly infuriating.

But first, something to ease the ache in his throat. Logan had suggested that there might be water in his near future.

“Do you want something to drink?”

Alec quickly nodded and watched Logan laboriously right himself and take up a plastic thermos from the table beside him. He sat down next to him cautiously, staying out of reach of the limited range of Alec’s hands.

“How-how many days?” Alec asked, his mouth dry, his tongue aching. “How long have I been here?”

Logan looked at him, his eyes studying Alec’s closely. He laughed a little in disbelief as he guided the plastic straw from the thermal mug to Alec’s lips.

“Is that really you?”

Alec sucked down the cool water in long steady gulps. Breathless, he looked back up at Logan.

“Who else would it be?”

“You’ve been—“ Logan sat back and took a deep breath. “.. You’ve been in but mostly out of it for about twelve days. These last three you slept straight through.”

Alec felt the hard casing of plaster reach up around the palms of his hands, the restraints refastened to fit around them. Flashes of his time came to him. Brief glimpses of pain and voices. He shook it off just to resettle his head.

Alec held up his hands. “When do these come off?” He asked as politely as he could.

“We’ll have to see.” Was all Logan said.

“For what?” Alec wondered why Logan looked so relieved. Worn too as though he hadn't slept in days.

Logan stood back up and retook his seat in the corner.

Alec looked around and suddenly found the dark quiet discerning. He fidgeted in his binds and tried several times to get into a more comfortable position.

“Hey?” He tried. “Hey Logan, tell me ya at least got a pack of cards or something?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec knew perfectly well he wasn't really hiding.

This was her place anyway, her own platform whenever she wished the world to go away. It was a good place, an effective six hundred feet. It was probably why he had escaped up here that night who knew how long ago. It was a place that seemed detached from the rest of the world let alone the city. The tower above the noise. The citadel in the clouds. Paint it white and you had yourself a storybook page.

He had to admit, he himself had an almost childish inclination towards cliché.

It was better than fleeing into a bottle of pre-pulse Jack Daniels. It was what he would have usually done given the circumstances. Tempting though it was and practical as it would have been at one time, he found the promise of oblivion not as comforting as it may have once been. He’d had enough oblivion to last him for a long time. All he wanted now was just to seek out a little peace.

He'd made up his mind that if he were going to brood, it would not be in some off-grid dive or any echelon of the city's sewer system. He liked the view up here where the wind raged so savagely it blotted out his thoughts. The clamor of the city below was now a soft, gray haze, the horizon beyond a wide expanse fading from distant green to gray, the pale yellow sunset chill and unfriendly. He wanted no darkness or light. No thoughts or ideas. Alec didn’t feel like waxing and waning on what had become of his transgenic existence. All he wanted to do was just take a breath, feel the beat of his blood and watch the city quiet and laid out before him.

Above the howling wind, he heard the unmistakable metallic thud on the hollow dome, her soft and slightly irritated.

"Hey!"

He didn't move, did not look up when she approached, still lost in the haze of trying not to think. He knew she’d find him here, this was after all, her stomping ground. Not his.

“Guess you finally figured out how to get outta four point restraints.” She shrugged as she took a seat beside him. “Yer gonna have to teach me that one some day.”

Alec said nothing.

“Look, I understand that well... I understand that you’re gonna want to be by yourself for a while, but I don’t think that’s such a great idea. C-Considering everything.”

Alec listened to her stop and almost heard her think her next thoughts out loud. ‘Considering everything’ was about as close as Max was ever going to delve into what had happened to him. To them both. Maybe even to Logan too.

“I don’t mean hangin’ at Logan’s forever? Besides, that would drive Logan crazy. You know how he is about his stuff.” She paused to fold her hands over her knees. “B-But I think you should stay there for a little while. Let the doc check you out a few more times.”

Alec touched the worst of his wounds over the fabric of his borrowed clothing. Max knew as well as he did that he didn’t need any more attention from any doctor. They were built to mend. And do it quickly. She wasn’t worried about his body. Max was worried about his mind.

He crossed his arms tighter over his chest.

“And hey? I told Normal you were back in town. I made up this really well, it was a really stupid story about you getting hitched and taking off for New York to join a band but he seemed to buy it. I think you can get your old gig back—“

"Max..."

He stopped his mouth before it replaced the right words with the wrong ones. He didn't want to look at her. No matter how fast they healed, the brown mottled bruises were still fading on her skin.

“I did that?" Alec swallowed.

"No."

He knew without looking that her forced smile had disappeared.

"Ames.” Max muttered. “Ames White did this. All of this.”

Bright lights and the feel of water just a few degrees above being ice closed over his head. The echo of stanch voices sounding out his vitals rang in his ears. Alec fought not to make any noise, lifting his trembling hands up over the sides of his head as if that would somehow stop his memory from recalling anything else.

But it kept coming in stuttering wavering flashes.

The dark box they kept him in. The other transgenics. The fires. The ache. Ames White. His voice. His hands. The heat.

“Where is he?” Alec asked numbly. “Is he dead?”

Max sighed. “I don’t know.”

The wind picked up and blew harder up against them. The sudden deafening thud of helicopter blades made them both turn. Rising up from some distance behind them, a black police surveillance chopper flanked by hover drones roared overhead, its floodlights flickering and exposing the streets and back alleys below in its routine nightly inspection.

"Ames will never leave us alone." Alec whispered.

Far away a dog was barking, the sodium street lamps glimmering on one by one by one as the twilight started to fall and lock the city down for the night.

Max moved over a little until their shoulders touched.

“It’ll be okay Alec.” She told him. “I mean, the guy can’t live for freakin’ ever can he?”

His mind slowly cleared with her words. A true smile coming to his face at the incredulous and offended tone in her voice. With a deep inhale he found that her close proximity did nothing but bring him the scent of her hair, and the thick of her leather. It really was over. The madness was gone. His body was his to control once again.

Alec shut his eyes and let the wind take over his senses instead.

Max was right. Nothing lasted forever.

Not even them.

 

The End.

OR IS IT?  
**Bonus Deleted Scene next.... Then it's onto Traces**


	9. BONUS DELETED SCENE- RATED MATURE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> !!!WARNING!!!
> 
> This is a het M/F-Mature-Explicit-Heaty X-5 thing. I removed this section from Part Two, because well, I just didn't think it fit into the story. It is a scene between when Max called Logan to Alec's apartment and what happened before Logan got there, did I mention it is rated NC-17? <3  
> This storyline will be continued in a new adventure of Alec's horrible and weird luck in "Traces". (which I actually like better)

Alec tried not to fight her when he saw her reappear with the extension cords. She looked at him carefully as she approached. Assessing his state. Cautious and wary.

He was hoping that maybe she'd just leave as quietly as she had come. No such luck.

Her scent was flowing over him like heavy perfume. Alec could also smell her nervous tension, small beads of sweat on her forehead and upper lip glittered weakly in the half light. The plastic cords cinched tight around his wrists, hissing through the sturdy pipes on the wall as she efficiency and tightly secured them. Every trait he owned screamed to not allow himself to be restrained but he knew it had to be done as well as she did.

It sickened him how much he had been reduced to the basest form of animal.

"A week?" She asked softly.

Even now he was surprised to hear the sound of compassion in her voice.

He nodded, feeling his lower jaw tremble as he tried to calm his breathing.

Max paused in her work, her hair hanging down and whispering madly against the flesh of his chest and neck. She took a deep breath, inhaling him back. He wondered what his own scent was like. Did it almost taste good when he hit her senses? Burnt sugar and a sweet damp heat. Warm salt of moist skin of the hollow of his neck. The soft and the hard, the tense and sensitive flesh that wouldn't stop throbbing between his legs. His eyes fluttered shut at the feel of the fabric of his sweatpants that clung to his perspiring body.

"I know.. I know it hurts..." Max mumbled so quietly that Alec almost didn't hear it.

It was a form of pain. Madness. A desperation that cut so deep that you felt like you were losing your mind piece by piece. Reduced to some pitiful animal that Manticore had stashed up and down his very DNA.

"But like this... you'll hurt someone Alec."

He didn't answer. He knew well enough of the truth in that. If he had even been offered what he needed he'd lose the few remaining scraps of self control he had left. His humanity was teetering on the brink of remained of his sheer will power.

She lay her warm hand on his heaving chest.

The simple physical contact made him moan, his heart beating even faster. "Don't-Don't..." The pipes creaked over him as he tried to twist away from the flare of her touch.

Max sighed and stood.

Alec started at the feel of her hands. She tugged his sweat pants down his thighs, her hands strangely delicate with him, pushing them down to his knees and leaving them there. His already flushed face burned hotter with his confusion and shame that Max was witnessing not his nudity, but his desperation.

"M-Max what are you- what are you doing.." He weakly drew his knees up in some semblance of dazed self consciousness.

"Just shut up Alec." She moved fluidly in the darkness.

Alec froze, his eyes wide in the dim of his room. "Max.."

She straddled him, her bare flesh resting on his hips, her hands firm on his shoulders. Alec stared up at her in disbelief, tears of his humiliation leaking from the corners of his eyes. Leaning forward, her hair hung down into his face and blinded him to it all. He was glad for that. He didn't want to watch her perform this act of mercy, his own flesh reacting instantly against his will and control. With a small intake of breath, her body took him in, impossibly hot, tight with sweet pain, just as her mouth closed on his, her tongue moving as slow as her hips.

Her gentleness stilled him and made him whimper into her mouth.

Alec met her movements, beginning to move under her with a violence that forced her to move her hands to the wall above his head instead to brace herself. She gasped over him when he shifted slightly, sending her practically on her knees, leaning forward to let him go as hard and deep as he wanted. He groaned as she touched him gently even now, grazing a thumb across his lower lip, her hand holding his face to tell him it was ok. It was ok. He couldn't hurt her. Not her. Not someone just like him. The metal that he was lashed to groaned and shifted from where it was bolted to the wall.

Lost under the damp hot curtain of her hair, Alec vaguely wondered who had been making so much noise and he realized it was himself, muffled by Max's mouth on his. Her hands tightening painfully on his shoulders, her fingernails digging in his flesh. It was as if she was letting him flow into her in every way, taking up his anguish and keeping it. His vision went white when he abruptly came, Max shuddering on top of him as she continued to move on his body even after he had frozen still.

Panting and damp with sweat, Alec heard for the first time in days, the noise in his head start recede. Almost calm. He knew it wouldn't last. But for now, the pain had subsided and drew back. He could breathe. He could think. While he felt momentarily sated, a surge of ferocious protectiveness startled him. Yet another charming effect of the beasts that he was made up of. Alec ruefully twisted his wrists in his binds, slick with sweat. He suddenly wanted to hold her close to him, as hard as he could. He wanted to touch her face as she had to him. He wanted to say one hundred stupid things. The urge welled and passed, his blood flowing and he came back to rational thought, his own mind resurfacing with the knowledge that it was all ludicrous. Every single bit of it.

Max's weight shifted on top of him and her warmth was regrettably and suddenly gone.  
A shadow in the dim room, the slide and zip of clothing as she replaced it. They both turned their heads when their transgenic ears heard the distant elevator rattle open.

Logan.

She pulled his sweat pants back up around his hips. His shame flooded back. He wanted to sink into the mattress and vanish. He couldn't look her the eye.

"M-Max-?" Alec stammered, still breathless. "I-I..I don't-"

"It's between us Alec."

She closed the door behind her.


End file.
